Subj: PRIVACY Recently I has talking to a policeman friend of mine about a new survivalist BBS that I found quite interesting. He seemed rather conserned and recommended me not to use this board. I have known that the FBI keeps "list" of those politicial enemys, death letter writers, and other such things, well survivalist seem to rank right up there. By using this board (So he seemed to think) I could get myself placed on one of those "List", and maybe somewhere down the line not be allowed security clearance because I was a known "Gun toting-savage survivalist." Any feedback on this, It seems logical to me. ------------------------ (And the reply was this) ------------------------ Well a government that feels that it is its duty to do everything to and for everybody is capable of anything, no matter how irrational. If it worries anybody, they can use a handle instead of their real name. Of course if any law inforcement agency were to actually call this board, they would be dissapointed. Civil defense bores most people, and I'm sure that law inforcement people are just as ignorant of what Civil Defense can do as the rest of the population. LIVE FREE is another bore, LIVE FREE is listed in the Library of Congress as an information source and has been around 25 years so there is nothing "exciting" there. Food storage has got to be the most boring topic of all, remember 20 million Mormans can't be wrong, just boring. If this board had a secret area for clandestine topics I'm sure it would arouse attention. The only hidden area is the LIVE FREE members only board and file section which anybody can access for $15/year. I'm sure that TBBS has a back-door somewhere, the manual states that it can be made to spit out its serial number somehow,(I have no idea how) so I'm sure that it also has a back door to sysop functions as well. I doubt that high level law inforcement officers have any interest in "survivalists" per se. They do go after the para-military type organizations which are confused with survivalism frequently. It certianly is possible for a para-military group to be also interested in survivalism, and visa versa. I have heard of groups that claim to be survivalist, but turn out to be para-military instead and have very little to do with survivalism. They probably just use term survivalist as a front or cover. Not all para-military groups are bad, some are very moral people with no intention of causing harm to anybody and are simply interested in defense. On the other hand, there are the wackos, the racists (all sides - whites hating blacks, blacks hating whites, Jews hating Arabs, Catholics hating protestants, et cetra ad nauseum) the Nazis (socialists that don't smile and at least are honest enough to tell you up front what they really want as opposed to CED type that hide their true intentions), the KKKs, religious extremists, political fringe groups, fronts for the above, etc. The Discovery Channel had a short program called KNOCKING ON ARAMEGEDON'S DOOR about survivalists. It was quite well balanced I thought, it had Kurt Saxon who tends to be a bit on the fringe in terms of his overly romantic and in some cases overly optimistic views, it had the paint-ball games, a survivalist consultant who was very articulate, a fellow that had a beautiful fallout shleter, the owners of THE LARDER who made some good points, and then some footage of an S.O.F. convention which had some good and bad points but did reflect what some various people and groups think. There were some floor traffic attractions (female booth staffers) that when asked if they were survivalists said sure I do scuba diving and rappelling, when asked about food storage, well I will SOME TIME... There was a camo clad person that stated very nicely there are limits to which people can be pushed and they have the choice of either fighting back or be trampled. Then there was this little group of guys in BDUs who were watching a jousting contest - they were asked if they were survialists, they said, "No we're are the guys that are going to take away all the goods from the survivalists," and then he went on about what he considers military tradition etc. That's the type that EVERYBODY needs to look out for!!! Of course that sort of reminds me of the that joke - What does a well prepared county civil defense director need to feed, cloth, house, medicate, and take care of the local population in case of disaster? Several squads of the National Guard and a list of all the survialists and Mormans in his county. So there are para-military wacko immoral thieves out their, some are inside the government and some are outside the government, and some make "hidden" governments - like the mafia. The techniques for survival and attitudes in general of survivalists and para-military groups can overlap IF the para-military group is based on a workable moral rational foundation. Unfortunately, many para-military are based on short-term socialist philosophies. Hopefully parasitic groups like that will kill each other off in a collapse and what is left will pose no danger to the more productive survivalist groups that are more interested in making more pies than determining who gets how big a piece. I think the central point here is that if this board was filled with what the mass media attempts to portray survivalists as, I would avoid this board my self! When I first started getting interested in the subject I was as misinformed as anybody because my main source of what "survivalists" were was from the mass media - wild-eyed, spaced-out, blood-thirsty kooks. In fact, for two years before I garnered the courage to go to a survivalists' seminar, I didn't know WHAT to expect. Then I found that most survivalists are just like anybody else except they are aware of future problems more than most people are AND are making preparations to avoid or minimize those problems. Hanging around this forum and database will really help.