I know that there are a lot of you who don't believe the government is constantly scanning the internet. Unfortunately, that is a fallacy.
Why are investigators scanning Google Map photos? What software are they using to do that? You can rest assured that they can use the same software to scan for ANY pictures you post of your firearms in public forums. Think that story about losing your firearms in a boating accident is going to work when they show up with copies of your posts to boards such as this? Remember that anything you post on a forum such as this can be used against you in a court of law, including the pictures of your firearms.
You always have to assume anything you post, upload, or transmit is subject to some sort of snooping somewhere. You also can't count on companies that host your data to keep it "secure" or for companies that say they protect your privacy to do so. The electronic information world is a literal minefield of data-harvesting.
There is a great movie that came out in the 90s called "hackers" - and while 98% of the technical stuff represented in the movie is fake - there are a few nuggets of truth. One scene in particular is when all the youths are sitting at the local hangout, one makes the statement "
you can be sitting at home doing nothing, and your name is ran through like 7 computers a day - Orwell is alive and livin' large." The unfortunate and predictable truth to this is these days the number of computers an individual's name is ran through a day is probably in the thousands.
Just the "war" raging over cell phones is an interesting read. There have been multiple court cases over what government agencies and LEOs are allowed to do when it comes to accessing the data on your cellphone when it is "locked." There have been multiple issues where law enforcement agencies have been using software to "crack" passcodes on suspect's phones - which most consider to be an unlawful and unconstitutional action. It is one of those things that varies greatly depending on the leanings of the courts in that area.
Even VPNs are under some scrutiny about how they are handling customer's data and how willing they are to turn it over.
Technology has come so far, that for about $40 dollars and some free open source software I can make a home-made license plate scanner to hang on my dashboard and automatically identify, and capture the text on license plates.
I feel that information security and the laws that govern it are going to be a very, very hot topic in the next few years.
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