Lesson learned: "We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area." - if you want your possessions found, you can either attach a note with your home address or an AirTag... or simply something _so_ sketchy that an intelligence agency delivers your stuff together with an awesome story.
I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
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Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#12Quoted post unavailable.
I agree you should be able to do that without consequences but there's nothing brave about pulling down an American flag and stepping on it.
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#13This story (assuming it's true) should serve as an excellent example of why you need privacy even if you think that you don't. In peace time the NSA is only looking for "terrorist" and leaves everyone alone, but in case of war they would start creating lists for any and everything. All it takes is one "tough" agent trusting their gut feeling/algorithm based on your browsing history and shopping habits to put a target…
"and you are done" While I agree about the need for privacy, I don't think this story is a good argument for it. One of the interesting aspects of this story is that the main actual consequence of this privacy invasion was that he got his glasses back.
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#14How does one find out that you have an FBI record?
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#15So... the headline invokes an inappropriate image. The author attracted the attention of the FBI in 1942, when "cryptography" meant wartime codebreaking, and his amateur cypher got lost and then found and turned in by a genuinely concerned citizen . I mean, OK. Sure, it's bad that kids interested in math get caught up in this. But come on, it was the middle of the biggest war in history and real spies were indeed doi…
This is the important take-away, here.
If he were dabbling with radios at the age of 11, in 1942, he'd have ran into the same kinds of problems.
Hell, simply being of the wrong ethnicity was more than enough to dump a world of problems on your head in that time period. 120,000 people were sent to internment camps for doing literally nothing, and we're wringing hands over a kid getting a house call from the FBI.
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#16Protip: an FBI record means nothing and you can check if you have one too!
There is a gov site somewhere maybe someone else knows the url
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#17So... the headline invokes an inappropriate image. The author attracted the attention of the FBI in 1942, when "cryptography" meant wartime codebreaking, and his amateur cypher got lost and then found and turned in by a genuinely concerned citizen . I mean, OK. Sure, it's bad that kids interested in math get caught up in this. But come on, it was the middle of the biggest war in history and real spies were indeed doi…
Most importantly, there is something modern enforcement could learn from the story: nothing bad (aside from a stressful meeting) actually happened to the suspected but ultimately innocent kid
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#18This story contains a link to another of his stories (also published in Communications of the ACM, February 1989).
Old as it is, it seems quite relevant in our current race-obsessed culture: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#19Quoted post unavailable.
I agree you should be able to do that without consequences but there's nothing brave about pulling down an American flag and stepping on it.
In many time periods in this countries short history, you would be dead wrong. But, I was more pointing to the bravery of these FBI agents, investigating this horrendous crime
Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
#20I got a CSIS record at the age of 12 for the same reason. It turned out after someone did a FOIA request that the IRC chatroom I was having some crypto fun in had a CSIS record.
Sadly after that a lot of people got spooked and I lost touch with many there. Never got to meet my friend despite living in the same city :(