Flagged Books

This is on behalf of a work colleague of mine who was talking about this topic with me today. She had heard somewhere that certain controversial books (no examples I'm afraid) were flagged up by the secret services and anyone who purchased them using anything other than cash could then be added to a list of people with dubious tendancies. She was wondering if this really happened - I presumed yes. Has anyone heard anything about this or have any more detailed info and examples?

The gov't is beginning to track civilians in all types of ways.

On the check-out desk at Santa Cruz public library, beside the usual signs asking people to keep quiet and to return their books on time, there is what might be called a sign of the times. 'Warning: although Santa Cruz public library makes every effort to protect your privacy, under the federal USA Patriot Act records of books you obtain from this library may be obtained by federal agents,' it reads. 'Questions about this policy should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft.'

Full Story

By employing advanced data mining procedures and gathering information on the entire citizen population based on everything from grocery shopping to purchase to library book checkouts, the backers of TIA promised they could help keep the United States free from terrorists. And liberty.

This is a pretty good article to read if you're not familiar with TIA (total information act), recently rename terrorist information act.

Which to me means, if all citizens are under the control of TIA, then we are all considered terrorists to our U.S. gov't.

I bought a copy of Catcher In The Rye a few weeks ago in another town.

It had an electronic tracker between it's pages.

I bought 3 other books from the same shop and there was nothing in those.

Thinking that this little chip was just to deter shoplifters, I checked on the company who made these trackers and
discovered that they can actually track.
How far I don't know.

Sorry, I forgot to include the last (and most important) point in the article.

The re-naming of the "Total Information Act" to the "Terrorism Information Act" obviously was intended to drum up automatic support for fighting terrorism, as though any and all civil liberties took a backseat to digging up potential terrorist threats.

I first heard of this in the movie Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson. I have heard it in many other places too since then. I know Hitler's autobiography was on it too, i know the name just dont want to spell it that badly. translation was "My Struggle".

Mein Kampf, who.

and on this subject, the Supreme Court ruled today that the Child Online Protection Act will be allowed to stand. part of the COPA requires libraries to install filtering software on their computers that access the internet or forgo federal funding. sure, it's to protect children, but it'll also filter information that's not necessarily objectionable, like breast cancer information. ('cause you know, the word 'breast' automatically means porn :p) not to mention there's no switch to shut it off for adult surfers. if that's not enough, many of those programs also keep logs of all the sites visited per user. more fun with restricting information courtesy of the government.

Originally posted by Leveller
I bought a copy of Catcher In The Rye a few weeks ago in another town.

It had an electronic tracker between it's pages.

I bought 3 other books from the same shop and there was nothing in those.

Thinking that this little chip was just to deter shoplifters, I checked on the company who made these trackers and
discovered that they can actually track.
How far I don't know.

this is right out of "conspiracy theory". it's funny i was just talking about catcher in the rye last night with regards to there being "something" about it. do you remember what the catcher was? it was a guy who stopped people playing tag in tall rye grass from running off a cliff at the edge of the field.
the book is about going crazy. gradually.
it may be a trigger.

Well, I consider myself a pretty well adjusted kinda guy so I'm no more likelier to go crazy over reading a book than over any of the other madness that I see in this world!!!

Here's a link to the company that made the thingymajig:

www.checkpointsystems.com...

Here's a photo of the chip. Mine isn't exactly like these but it's very similar in design. It has a different coloured shape in the middle and isn't symetrical like the ones in the photo.



It might just be a coincidence that I happened to pick up the one book out of the four with this thing in it.
Still. It's a great conspiracy theory marketing point, isn't it?!!!!

As to the actual Catcher himself? I'm afraid that job is out of my league.
I suffer from Hay Fever.

i consider myself pretty well adjusted, too. however, when i went crazy(not kidding) and was strapped in getting interviewed, they asked me what books i read. i said, "catcher in the rye" and "the art of zen and motorcycle maintenence".
i had read the latter, but didn't really remember the part about persig going crazy after having a crystallization of thought.
i had never read "catcher in the rye". i have since. i don't know why i said i had. when i watched conspiracy theory later, i was amazed.
i had a crystallization of thought(multidimensional physics, conspiracy history, pyramid schemes, police state, problem/reaction/solution, sacred geometry, phoenician alphabet, non-linear time, illusion of 3D, institutionalized disinfo, etc.) i got mad at the prison warders. i spun out. my spinning was well founded subsequent research has affirmed. 911 was the trigger that started me needing to know.
it's a whacky reality seething beneath our noses. multidimensional conspiracy theory is much more exciting than boring old 3D.
(as a side note, they prescribed a new drug, "zyprexa". the first side effect listed(out of two pages) was "may be fatal". that's gonna help, haha! i didn't take it. flockin' poison.)
p.s. this was october '01. it was a brief spin around the other block. i'm fine. i was fine even then. it was sleep deprivation(although the "professionals" said i was "bi-polar". (aren't we all bipolar? left/right, good/evil.) anyway, they were wrong. nazi bastards.) i was paranoid/mad that i was being tagged and tracked. full circle, catcher.

Well, like I said: I'm pretty well adjusted.
This means I'm not a great sufferer of paranoia. The tag is just as likely to be a Shoplifting Detector and even if it isn't - who cares?
I'm not worried about my government knowing what I read.
I obey the laws of my land and really don't have anything to hide.

I consider myself to be pretty aware so I'm not worried about the content of the book either.

But it is an interesting coincidence and at the end of the day it's little things like this that stoke conspiracy theories.

Thank you MorningtonCrescent, I the book but didnt have time to look up the title. Hate it when that happens. I have read this book (I own a copy), its a pretty interesting read.

Just a quick mention for those who have purchased books containing security tags while other books purchased do not.

While I was in school/college I had a part-time job working at the local Waterstones bookstore. Inserting these security stripes into books was the job of the employee and it would be completely time-wasting to insert these into every book. In our store that could mean up to 100,000 books. Therefore, we only inserted the tags into new releases, best sellers, and the most expensive of the books for sale.

So just because your copy of "Delia Smith's How To Cook" has a security tag but "Cooking for Dummies" doesn't, don't take it too personally.

Why would they keep track of people buying "some books" instead of banning theses "some books"?

I work for a library system. I have yet to hear or see anything like what's bee mentioned above... Though many libraries and bookstores have anti-theft devices inside the pages of their books, or inside a book's spine.

I work with the actual computer system that tracks books that are out on loan... and which tells a patron if a book can be found at another system library. Trust me, at least on our end, there is nothing that even remotely indicates if a book has been marked due to content. Our records just tell us if you are a deadbeat who owes us $80.00 in fines or something like that.

Now, could the NSA have a 'tap' into our system.. maybe, but it should be noted that individual books are entered into the system by local librarians and given specific 'B numbers'. The librarians who set-up these numbers do not consult with the NSA before assigning a number to a book... and unless the government had a list as to which B Numbers were certain books, their is no way that they could track their usage.

I haven't found any of those things in books....I bacicly only like buy game guides and graphinc novels anyway....but was this book a hard cover or a paper back? maybe this thing is only in hard covers...

[Edited on 30-7-2003 by Curiosity]

Leveller how are you going to find the company that makes the "Trackers"...I know what you are speaking of, the little coil of wire that sets off the magnetic alarms at the doorways, shaped in a square?

These things have no "made by" tags so it must have been hard to find out who made it.

And it must be even more hard to track, since it has no circutry or power source

Originally posted by FreeMason
Leveller how are you going to find the company that makes the "Trackers"

Dude. Take a look at my previous post.
I've put a link to the company that made the one in my book.
How do I know it's the right company?
They copyrighted the little feller and it's got the company name written on it.

You say "no circuitry". To me, the thing actually looks like a circuit!!!
Power source - I don't know.

As I said before - it probably IS a shoplifting detector. But to find this thing in a copy of Catcher In The Rye and not in any of the other 3 books that I bought is a big coincidence.

I would like to see a list of all of the seditious, suppressed (yet available) titles which "ought" to have trackers (past, present or future variety) in them, so I might have some enjoyable reading over Christmas.

Last year, while I was more active in the research of the political activities, I had run across an article explaining a Huge data base that was to come into play this year, controled by the department of defense. This data base would track all of us, in things such as doctor visits, grocery purchases, books, basically anything we purchased, I presume with credit cards.
The data base would work like access in microsoft, using a query to group people by certain questions, then probeing further, until they generate a terroist profile that certain people match.

They then would investigate these folks in the far reaching hope of deturring a terrorist attack.

To me it is illegal to do this to the American people, basically spy on us all, and group us into small blocks associated by similar purchases on credit.

It does not suprise me though.

Another note on those security tags, a large UK technology firm Dixons/PC World and its affiliates use these tags on just about every item they sell.

I tried picking one off but its actually melted into the laminate finish on some items.