"The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online"

[[R-MOD]Saobh]

Humm , but I'm sure he's planting bombs while he's sleep walking !!!

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he's keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we're drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone's touchscreen. "OK! It's uploading now," says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. "It'll go public in a few seconds." Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you'll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.

Elahi's site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you're on, it's hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he's doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.

The globe-hopping prof says his overexposed life began in 2002, when he stepped off a flight from the Netherlands and was detained at the Detroit airport. He says FBI agents later told him they'd been tipped off that he was hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit; subsequent lie detector tests convinced them he wasn't their man. But with his frequent travel — Elahi logs more than 70,000 air miles a year exhibiting his art work and attending conferences — he figured it was only a matter of time before he got hauled in again. He might even be shipped off to Gitmo before anyone realized their mistake. The FBI agents had given him their phone number, so he decided to call before each trip; that way, they could alert the field offices. He hasn't been detained since.

So it dawned on him: If being candid about his flights could clear his name, why not be open about everything? "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," he says, grinning as he sips his venti Black Eye. Elahi relishes upending the received wisdom about surveillance. The government monitors your movements, but it gets things wrong. You can monitor yourself much more accurately. Plus, no ambitious agent is going to score a big intelligence triumph by snooping into your movements when there's a Web page broadcasting the Big Mac you ate four minutes ago in Boise, Idaho. "It's economics," he says. "I flood the market."

Elahi says his students get it immediately. They've grown up spilling their guts online — posting Flickr photo sets and confessing secrets on MySpace. He figures the day is coming when so many people shove so much personal data online that it will put Big Brother out of business.

For now, though, Big Brother is still on the case. At least according to Elahi's server logs. "It's really weird watching the government watch me," he says. But it sure beats Guantanamo.

The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online

[SiN|ScarFace]

Exhibitionism is more like it.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

I like it, reverse censorship.
Flood the government with so much data they can't process it.

[SiN|ScarFace]

More likely they can dedicate more resources to processing the info instead of collecting it them selves. Total Information Awareness was the same idea, only they would have to collect it, putting it out for them to see only makes it easier.

Instead of trying to preserve rights that are being infringed the solution is to fully submit? Fools.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

Works for this guy, in one very odd situation.
Great PR for him as an artist too, would take millions to get his name out ta as many people by any other method.

[Canadian4206]

It's actually quite smart, Let's face it. U.S. has a reputation of putting false terrorists people in Guantonamo. There has been many incidents of that. Putting all his information on a website where not only the Government check, but also his students and other public and pretty much the world. They can't just up and send him to Guantonamo. Even if the president himself told the FBI he was a terrorist commiting terrorist actions. They still can't just up and put him in Guantonamo. The fact he got hits from almost every branch of the U.S. Government and are currently still going on his site to check for info just tells you that they are very determined at catching him, and really do think hes a possible terrorist.

Though as long as the public knows what hes been up to on a 24/7 bases. They can't act on there assumtions. Very smart.

[[R-MOD]dunehunter]

Reminds me of that guy who Twittered his way out off an Egyptian jail. People knowing where you are -> more safety.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

Originally Posted by Canadian4206

It's actually quite smart, Let's face it. U.S. has a reputation of putting false terrorists people in Guantonamo. There has been many incidents of that.

Would you care to support that with evidence ?

Because I know you are not talking about Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi.
Recent suicide bomber was ex-Gitmo inmate - UPI.com

Up to 36 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed hostilities against the U.S., including some who have been taken back into custody or killed, the Pentagon says

US: Former Gitmo prisoner carries out recent attack in Iraq - Yahoo! News


So can you tell me about the "many" people that were or are in Gitmo for no reason ?

Many people were detained in the US in the days following 9-11 that turned out to be innocent and the watch lists have been shown to be poorly administered to say the least.

But I don't recall anyone being sent to Gitmo for no reason.
Carry a weapon and shoot at US soldiers, you are not innocent.
I believe if you do that and are not wearing a uniform the Geneva convention considers you to be a spy and subject to execution.

Instead, we are going to try terrorists captured in battle like street criminals, with all the protections available to a citizen of the US, which almost none of them are.

This guy's stunt is great PR for him and might actually help him out but most people, and by most I mean 99.5%, have nothing to fear from the security apparatus in this country.

If that were to change, then you go out and protest and write your congressperson to seek redress.

But there is a war on and that means some things will happen that really shouldn't happen.
But in this man's case, it didn't.....did it ?
He was detained and then quickly released and he wanted to make a political point and probably make some money.
Great !
Another example of American Ingenuity, make lemonade when you are given lemons.

And its' always popular to take a poke at the government.

[Canadian4206]

Originally Posted by ArmedDrunk&Angry

Would you care to support that with evidence ?

Because I know you are not talking about Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi.
Recent suicide bomber was ex-Gitmo inmate - UPI.com


US: Former Gitmo prisoner carries out recent attack in Iraq - Yahoo! News


So can you tell me about the "many" people that were or are in Gitmo for no reason ?

Many people were detained in the US in the days following 9-11 that turned out to be innocent and the watch lists have been shown to be poorly administered to say the least.

But I don't recall anyone being sent to Gitmo for no reason.
Carry a weapon and shoot at US soldiers, you are not innocent.
I believe if you do that and are not wearing a uniform the Geneva convention considers you to be a spy and subject to execution.

Instead, we are going to try terrorists captured in battle like street criminals, with all the protections available to a citizen of the US, which almost none of them are.

This guy's stunt is great PR for him and might actually help him out but most people, and by most I mean 99.5%, have nothing to fear from the security apparatus in this country.

If that were to change, then you go out and protest and write your congressperson to seek redress.

But there is a war on and that means some things will happen that really shouldn't happen.
But in this man's case, it didn't.....did it ?
He was detained and then quickly released and he wanted to make a political point and probably make some money.
Great !
Another example of American Ingenuity, make lemonade when you are given lemons.

And its' always popular to take a poke at the government.

Rofl, yeah sure I'll go dig up my evidence. In the mean time, you know what kind of torturing goes on in Guantonimo? I saw the pictures, the ones that were taken and released secretly. They don't whipe them as far as I know, but they have sets of exersizes that inflict the most torture on the human body, almost unbearable torture after doing it awhile. If I had to live through Guantonimo, and live through that torture, after I was released I would be yelling death to america and blowing up U.S. shit as well. However that does not prove that they were terrorists BEFORE they entered Guantanimo. Torture does crazy shit to people.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

So you can't back up what you said, ( because it isn't true ) so you switch to talking about torture.
What pictures are you talking about ?

Can you provide a link to it ?

Face it, most of them are terrorists who have killed people.
Mistakes will happen but in your world, we would let a terrorist set off a nuke before we violated his civil rights because it is more important to be seen as morally superior than to be ALIVE.

I disagree and so do most of the people alive today.

I think is really sucks that we have to do horrible things to wage this war but I'm not going to feel sorry for terrorists although I do feel bad for the inevitable mistakes that have and will be made.

But I think and most of the country clearly thinks that it is better than doing nothing and allowing more attacks on the American people.