I imagine that down in the fusion centers, they have intersting algorithms for flagging persons of interest.
A simple matter of assigning a “risk coefficient” to all of us, and all websites and cell phones. Then, when a “risky” individual contacts another, or visits “problem” websites, the multiplied “high risk coefficients” trigger little alarms.
The alarms might be in real time, as in, “Oh, look at this, this right wing nut job Joe Blow in Florida is learning all about making silencers today.”
Or it might be long term and cumulative, assigning us all a “weighted risk number,” for the Night of Long Knives when a purge could be carried out, with the intention of decapitating the potential leadership of the opposition.
I think a lot of lessons are being learned in Libya, Egypt and Syria about using the internet to target state enemies and enemy groups. Many a sad mother in Syria is telling the same tearful story about how her son was grabbed in the night from his bed by State Security arrest teams.
Picked up to be tortured and killed, based on his data-mined internet and cell phone use.
You don’t think our DHS could do the same? Eventually? At least, they have the technical capability to do so.
People always love the technical solutions, up until you get hit by a tidal wave of false positives, or get lured off target by people throwing smoke. Computers help, but it's men that truly analyze.
On that note, an interesting thing that people in Iraq or Afghanistan discovered inadvertently was a body of knowledge gained by 'insurgent Darwinism'. Everyone can have a theory about certain American capabilities, but after a while, a clear pattern emerges as far as who meets our threshold to bother to come after. Who gets targeted. Who gets away. Who gets caught. Who gets released. How long our ROE leash is. What our raids look like. What the process is.
After a while, it turns into a game, where the insurgents understand our capabilities and routines better than we do. Americans specialize at certain tasks. We're often cogs who are only vaguely aware of how other parts of the machine operate. A captured insurgent, in his own way, experiences the whole system. And shares it.
Whether or not you're looking to hide, or looking to be found, it won't take long to determine what to do, for those that are paying attention.
They’ll never execute or persecute a citizen, they’ll call him a “Domestic Terrorist” first.