I’m letting this post cut in front of another one I started
Would you request any information the FBI, NSA, and CIA may have about you?
I’ve got three letters, one to each agency, stamped and ready to go. I was going to mail them today. I showed them to the emm, since she didn’t believe me when I told her about it a couple days ago.
“Mickey Glitter,” she says, “I understand you’re curious, but do you really think this is a good idea? I mean, what if a simple request puts up all sorts of red flags? What if it triggers an audit on past income or causes you to be audited in the future? What if it makes it difficult to get a loan or a job or…”
“What if it lands me on a no-fly list? What if I’m disappeared? Would you come visit me in Gitmo, Ma?” I replied, half seriously, but only about the no-fly list. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point of being disappeared by inquiring about records we have the right to see, under the FOIA.
But in Jorge’s Amerika, I can’t be 100% sure about that. If the government has the ability to take away laptops and spy on our electronic communications, then yeah, maybe disappearing could happen.
All half-joking aside - I’m asking in all earnestness. Would you request information like this from the government? Why or why not? Leave anonymous comments, if you’d prefer, although would they really be anonymous? If you’re really serious about remaining so, come back to strange cousin susan via anonymouse.
In the UK, you can request data from various official Government sources. But to be honest, I just assume the Government in its various guises knows everything I’ve said or written on any electronic or bureaucratic medium. Like Google, it’s just in how they *find* it that’s the issue.
I’d be far more annoyed if they had it wrong - for instance, my workplace has somehow put me on a list for working in Beijing covering the Olympics this summer.
I wouldn’t ask for the data, simply because how would I gain anything by knowing about it?
Andrew: There’s nothing I could gain from such an exercise, I’m just curious, really. =)
If it was a form I could fill in on the internet, and get results back - for free - then I might do it. But of course I have to pay $20 for each application for my data…
It was indeed something I found on the internets. Quite handy! I don’t think we get charged unless it’s an excessively large file, so I should be able to get mine for nothing.
The count is two against, one for. The best quote about this so far is “Fuck those Fascists!”
I don’t think I want to know for precisely the reasons you mentioned… even if they haven’t been investigating me, requesting any information would arguably give them a reason to do so. And while they probably wouldn’t find anything incriminating, the lack of appreciable evidence hasn’t stopped people from trying to bring charges against me in the past!