Big brother at the USDOJ is watching

I found this very interesting tidbit from my sitemeter:

Domain Name   usdoj.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address   149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice)
ISP   US Dept of Justice
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  Maryland
City  :  Potomac
Lat/Long  :  39.023, -77.1993 (Map)
Distance  :  2,059 miles
Language   English (United States)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinXP
Browser   Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution  :  1024 x 768
Color Depth  :  32 bits

Time of Visit   Dec 1 2006 5:11:13 am
Last Page View   Dec 1 2006 5:11:13 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL http://www.topix.net/us/atf
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffman.org/2006/11/30/don-t-drop-your-guard/
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffman.org/2006/11/30/don-t-drop-your-guard/
Out Click    
Time Zone   UTC-5:00
Visitor’s Time   Dec 1 2006 8:11:13 am
Visit Number   116,927

http://www.topix.net/forum/us/atf gathers news and blog mentions of ATF and people at the US Department of Justice (hi!) visit those websites. I wonder what they thought of me saying “The ATF has no constitutional authorization to even exist let alone enforce illegal laws.”

Of particular interest to me is that the “User Agent” string of the browser included the unusual item “DOJ3jx7bf”. This item looks like it might be a unique identifier for a particular Department of Justice computer. If so then one can find out what that particular computer/user has been viewing on all websites that you have access to the logs file for.

Hence, with the proper tools and a bit of smarts, one can watch the watchers. To that effect here is a sample which includes the search terms “harvey milk gay activist”, “guns & jenny price”, “john+pepper+ipsc”, “dirty+gun+barrel+picture”, “tannerite”, and the always popular “how to make a bomb”. We can also see some of the other sites our “friend” has been visiting. Examples include http://nfttu.blogspot.com/, http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=229822, and http://www.alphecca.com/mt_alphecca_archives/001891.html.

One must not get too paranoid about being watched. This applies to both webmasters as well as our “friend” at the DOJ. As I was reminded by a fellow blogger at the Gun Bloggers Rendezvous a couple months ago, there are known friendlies in the government. I don’t have any particular hostility toward any of the government workers I have met (certain politicians are different story–I would like to invited Schumer, Clinton, Feinstein, and some others to permanently leave the country with nothing more than the clothes on their backs). But no matter how friendly they are most Federal workers are doing jobs that have no constitutional authority.

Note to my guests from the USDOJ and/or the ATF: You are quite welcome to leave a comment, send me an email, or get a legitimate job.

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2 thoughts on “Big brother at the USDOJ is watching

  1. “…or get a legitimate job.”

    And there lies another obstacle. We’re not talking about a mere political issue, or a mere Constitutional issue (mere, heh). We’re also talking about major career issues for thousands of people– thousands who are going to fight tooth and nail, simply because it means loosing vs. keeping a job. My solution would be to put into the bill that eliminates the ATF a provision to essentially buy them off enough that they’re eager to go home and become regular citizens, or racketeers, or whatever it is in their nature to become when left to their own devices. Distasteful as it may be for some, I believe it would be far cheaper in the long run than any of the alternatives I can think of at the moment.

  2. Another set of big losers under an ATF shut-down would be the criminal organizations that are currently supported by it: Bootleggers, black market cigarette runners, and black market gun runners would loose their incentive to exist virtually overnight, as the price disparity between “legal” and “illegal” booze, tobacco and guns would evaporate. The question about those interests is; what level of political sway do they hold? It would be hard to guess, but since we’re talking about a very large pile of cash, I think it is not insignificant.

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