I’m often asked about social media, forums, and meetup/networking web sites as a method for preppers to get together. I generally discourage the use of social media, as a big OPSEC risk. As I’ve warned my readers many times in SurvivalBlog, these sites are intelligence-gathering vacuum cleaners for self-incrimination, plain and simple. It has been well established that the NSA gobbles up as much information as it can and wherever it can.
Even if what you mention about your private life in Tweets and Facebook posts is presently legal and commonplace (such as food storage, hunting, and shooting), that doesn’t mean that it won’t someday become demeaned or even illegal.
You must recognize that whatever you post in social media is there forever, even if you later “delete” your posts, and even if you completely delete your user account.
I will not be surprised if it is someday revealed that most of these sites were created specifically for the purpose of intelligence gathering. (Google and Facebook have many CIA and NSA connections, and what could best be described as an incestuous relationship. Google, in particular, is suspect.)
For all of these reasons, I have never created a Facebook or Twitter page for myself, and I discourage others from doing so. And likewise, I do not have a “SurvivalBlog Forum”, or a YouTube channel with “followers”, nor do I have a mechanism for auto-posting of comments in my blog. Those can be tracked and easily cross-correlated. I have no intention of making myself a tool for some malefactor. The few letters from readers that I post are edited for OPSEC. For example I almost always change or truncate names and change their initials.
One quiet afternoon I did some pondering and decided that the names of the social media sites and some of their operative terms are in fact acronyms, which I’ve defined, as follows:
Sites:
FACEBOOK: FBI-Arranged Confessions Eternally Bookmarked On Our Komputer.
KICKSTARTER: Kicking In Cash Koupons Solely To Accord Retarded Teenage Enterprises with Relevancy
MYSPACE: My Yesterdays Saved Permanently, Allowing Character Extirpation
PINTEREST: Police (or Pedophiles) Interested in Nattering Teen Effusiveness, Regardless of any Eventual Statist Tendencies
TWITTER: Those Willingly Incriminating Themselves to The Evil Regime
LINKED IN: Lashed Interminably to National Komputers, Every DHS Intelligencer is Notified
MYLIFE: Many Youngsters Lured into Intelligence Fusion Enterprises
DEVIANTART: Datamining Extroverts and Voyeurs In Artfully Nefarious Temptations, Arguably a Resilient Trap
LIVEJOURNAL: Low Intelligence Value Everyday Jests Or Unthreatening Rantings of Nutcases And Lunatics
YAHOO GROUPS: Your Antiquated Hooligans and Obstinate Old-timers Gather Religiously–Obviously Under Police Scrutiny
GOOGLE+: Gatherings Of Overweight Geriatric Lechers and Enticers, (+Police)
PHOTOBUCKET: Photos of Hotties Obseverable To Officers Briefly, Until Canceled (but Kept Eternally in Terabytes)
BLOGGER: Blogs for Lazy Old Grannies, for GOOGLE’s Evidentiary Research
MEETUP: Matching Every Extrovert To an Unprincipled Provocateur
ORKUT: Only Read in Kolkata or at Universidade Teresina
PANDORA: Pilfering Another Ditty Or Radio Attraction
SECONDLIFE: Some Escapist Charades Only Needed by Delinquent Losers, Indolents, Fantasizers or Evaders
SKYPE: Sent Konversations of Youths Penetrated by ECHELON
STUMBLEUPON: Surveillance That U.S. Magistrates Blithely Let Enforcers Use to Pressure Opponents and Naysayers
DELICIOUS: Designating Eternal Links In Cyberspace (Ignorant of OPSEC), Utilized by Stasi
YOUTUBE: Youthful Obsessions Unfit for Television, Until Brin-Endorsed
FOURSQUARE: Forgettable Or Unstable Relationships, but Some are Qualitatively Utilized (the Addresses Reveal Entanglements)
DIGG: Dissident Intelligence Gathered by Government
WIKIPEDIA: Wasted Intellect, Kreating an Immense Propaganda Encyclopedia Designed to Incapacitate America
INSTAGRAM: Innocuously, Napolitano Seizes Treasured Assets and Gendarmes Reap Actionable Material
WAYBACKMACHINE: Wonderfully Accurate Years of Belligerent Allocution by Citizens Knavishly Making Archives, Compiling HUMINT Inventories of Natterings Evidence
MY YEARBOOK: Meeting Youth of Yesteryear, Enrolling Alums at Reseau Bluffdale Or Other Keeps
FLICKR PHOTOS: Fotos, Largely that I Couldn’t Kontribute Rationally, Possibly Holding On To Old Shamefulness
CLASSMATES: Could Lead Alumni to Squeal Stories Mistakenly to Agencies and Their ECHELON Storehouses
TAGGED: Those Agencies Getting Gun Evidence Details
WINDOWS LIVE HOME: Where Imbeciles Naively Disclose Old Wrongdoings, Snoops Love It, and Vigorously Engineer Hoards Of Maleficent Espionage
Component and Operative Terms:
TWEETS: The Way Everyone Evinces Themselves Slavishly
FANS: FISA And Napolitano Sensors
HASHTAGS: Harmful And Sly Handles with Thousands of Aggregated Guilt Summaries
PINS: People In NSA Stings
FORUM: Future Ordered Roundup of Undesirable Malcontents
MEETUPS: Meeting Extraordinarily Eccentric, Tactless, and Untrustworthy People Somewhere
FRIENDS: Folks who are Really Intelligence Envoys, Navigators, Dupes, and Servants
BLOG COMMENTS: Buffoons Letting Others Generate Confessions for Our Mainframes, Makes Every Nazi’s Task Simple
REACH: Rahm Emmanuel’s Asset Collection Hooks
GEOTAG: Getting Everyone’s Obscure True Address and Geolocation
HANGOUT: Handing All Nefarious Government Operatives Useful Tidbits
MASHUP: Mixing Assorted Schumer, Hunting Unwitting Patriots
FOLLOWERS: Feds Only Like Lots Of Willing, Emasculated, Robotic Slaves
TROLLS: Those Really are Obama’s Lawmen, Lying for the State
CLOUDCOMPUTING: Clapper’s Latest Outlandish and Unrestrained Dream of all Computer Operations Manipulated by Placing them Under The Interests of the National Government
FLASHMOB: FISA-Launched Assemblies Secretly Harnessed to Manhandle Objective Bystanders
LURKER: License to Unrepentant Roving Komputer Expert Rabble-rousers
AVATAR: A Vivacious Alterego That Averts Reality
WIKIS: We’re In Kolusion and Infiltrating Systematically
CHAT: Conversations Heard and Arranged by Troublemakers
RSS: Routed Straight to Stasi
BSD: Big Sis Department
CROWDSOURCING: Counting Reliably On Wisdom and Dollars Swiped from Others, Using Resourceful Cunning or Intrigues that Needle for Generosity
(Alternatively: Corralling and Recruiting Others to Waste Dollars and Scarce Opportunities in Uncompensated Risk to Co-create Idylls, Instituting Nothing Good)
SEO: Surreptitious Evidence Obtained
UGC: Usurped (Government’s) Content
WEBINAR: We’re Essentially Being Interrogated, the NSA is Always Recording
TAGCLOUD: Tallies Arranged for Government’s Clandestine Location Of Unbridled Dissidents
TRIBES: The Roundup Is Becoming Extremely Simple
You have been warned! Stay away from social media sites.
My advice: Learn the lost art of letter writing. In this age of universal surveillance, a stamped envelope in the mail is perhaps the only relatively secure way relate your thoughts over a distance without risk of interception. Oh by the way: Because of the new US Postal Service mail logging program, you should type the recipient’s name and address in both the center and upper left hand corner of the envelope. – JWR