Here it is..... My First Post. [HOAX]

ADMIN UPDATE:
Read below the opening post for an update...




I recently found this site while at work. Where I work exactly I can not say but I am certain that my username will allow you to determine where I work and what I do for a living.

I had initially planned on creating a post to blow the lid off something that I do for a living. Then I found out about the twenty posts rule.

I figured I might as well get banned for breaking the rule because I feel the information I am about to share is that important.

So MODS take a moment and read the post and go ahead and ban me for breaking the twenty posts rule because I'm breaking it right now only because I felt so strongly that the information I am sharing is truly that important.

I work for a US Government agency. We have a lot of rules in this organization but they have offices around the country typically in what they call 'hubs'.

A hub is an area that is connected to spokes which are centralized areas. I work in a hub which connects two major bandwidth locations in our country.

My job is simple. Each day a large chunk of data is dumped from a monitoring system. It looks for certain keywords on the Internet that have passed through that hub. Thanks to our friends at a major telecommunications company we can easily monitor Internet traffic at each hub really well.

The data is huge though and a system hasn't been developed to handle it. People ASSUME that we have something like this. We don't. We rely on computers and humans and what is called inside the organization as Crowdthink. Crowdthink is the human element. After a word is found it is sent to an unknown number of employees on workstations at the hub to be reviewed. Each gives the content a simple flag rating. The crowd's overall idea on the material is calculated. If we select Further Review it gets sent to more people typically outside the hub (at another hub or sometimes the big spoke).

The data is collected for further review if required at the spoke or at the big spoke "central spoke".

We are not allowed to have cell phones in our workplace or any cameras or anything of that nature. We are each suppose to be monitored via camera but a few of us have determined that isn't the case at all times. Each person's results are not shared with another person nor do we know the URLs of the content we are reviewing (easy to determine though from banners, images, etc) to not bias us on any certain material we are being displayed.

This project was started in 2006 and recently we are hearing talks of being laid off. If this is the case I am not sure but I've broken the biggest rule by bringing a camera phone in to my work station and recording as much video as I felt safe doing. I hope some day to share everything I know but fear for now that is a bad idea.

I felt strongly about this to make this my introduction post knowing I will be banned. I feel that is okay because the reality is making a lot of posts on here could get me in more trouble then a ban on a website.

Here is the video. Feel free to pick it apart. Likely it will be removed when I am banned anyways but at least I can feel better knowing I posted this online somewhere.

View My Video

BTW: Some hub cities just in the Midwest are: Madison, Fort Wayne, Toledo. Some spokes are Chicago, and Indy.







An ATS member was able to reproduce the video in this post

Also, this thread-author suggested we might figure out his point of origin via his username... so I took him up on that, but one step further and confirmed his registration email address. His email is that of an Internet game company (not government agency), and many of his posts also originate from an IP that correlate to the game company.


Moved to the Hoax forum.

Member banned.


- SkepticOverlord





[edit on 4-12-2009 by SkepticOverlord]

...... very interesting...

[edit on 2-12-2009 by radarloveguy]

[edit on 2-12-2009 by radarloveguy]

[edit on 2-12-2009 by radarloveguy]

[edit on 2-12-2009 by radarloveguy]

[edit on 2-12-2009 by radarloveguy]

..... and that's all I've got to say about that !



[edit on 2-12-2009 by radarloveguy]

Interesting, Couple questions.

What exactly are you guys looking for in particular?

Would in any case your opening post find its way back to the very place you work?

Any specific branch of the government?

What video??

It sounds cool, but I can't seem to see the video... it says "Video Removed"

Sounds just like the Tom Clancy book im reading at the moment. Your not Jack Ryan Jr are you

Will look at the video later, but its hardly earth shattering news to me that web traffic is monitored

Did you work at AT&T intercepting Internet traffic or a proper Government security organization? Did you intercept mobile txts and phone calls as well?
What sort of secrecy contract are you under?

It would of been better if you pulled ATS up on the video.
Would it be deemed safe?
I would laugh if it was.

[edit on 2-12-2009 by pazcat]

Thanks for posting, spooky.

Are you basically reviewing samples of blogs and facebook entries?

Are any of the reviews from forum postings?

Can you check and see if any of my identities are in the "hit" pile?

Do you think that eventually the Pope's secret army will come to drag us out at 2 am?

Are they concerned most about weaponry, constitutionalists, religionists, anti-religionists, or negative speech about our governments? Which 2 are the top priority?

What is your criteria for labeling or deeming something as "unsafe"?

Thanks.

[edit on 2-12-2009 by Alethea]

If what you are saying is true you have just made sexual intercourse to your buttocks region.

Video doesn't really provide much information, a quiet dark room. no back ground noise, no light, surely it can't be an office building .Probably just some kid in a basement with a neat little program.

Welcome To ATS.

Thank you for sharing the information with us.

Our moderators are not brainless robots so maybe your thread won't get banned.

Of course, our secret agency here at ATS might torture you for more information but you will survive.

Be careful and send more information.

Going to reply to as many of you as quickly as I can.

radarloveguy: Thanks

LightWonder:

We are told to look for anything out of the ordinary. That seems vague and I think they do that on purpose but everyone in the hub really knows that we are looking for terrorist activities and the scary one for me at least is for things that may disagree with the organizations point of view on things.

Yes it could possibly find itself back to the organization but I am banking on our slowness to keep me safe for the moment. Going through thousands upon thousands of websites each day is slow work even with a massive computer and the human element.

We provide certain people the illusion of safety in my opinion because we sort through so many false hits each day it would take us a long time to get to the real stuff. I am kind of hoping that would be the case on this sort of post.

halfmanhalfamazing: The video is still up for me at least. Let me know if you keep having problems and I'll try posting it somewhere else. I chose Tinypic because for the moment the content on it isn't really indexed by our systems to my knowledge. I have no clue if that is the case but I've never seen a page on it show up on my terminal.

expatwhite: I think I need to read some Tom Clancy. I might be missing some good stuff. Agreed on the hardly earth shattering news but the thing that scared me and coaxed me in to saying something is the fact that it is being used against regular, average everyday people. I have no idea how I passed the tests for this job with my conscious.

Nventual: I'm glad to see you assume AT&T. That is a company that if most people did a traceroute to any website would find a majority of traffic goes through. I won't say either way though if they are involved but if people look at how much bandwidth they truly control they might start to wonder.

I worked for a proper government agency through a private company. This organization often uses private companies as "fronts". They serve multiple purposes one of which is to make money though. Massive amounts of money selling these sort of things to the private industry to use against foreign companies.


As far as calls, mobile text messages, emails, etc I believe a similar piece of software is used. I only ever use this piece of software though which only views websites. It is a fairly recent piece of technology using software stolen from various open source projects and renders sites quickly that are sent to it from the spoke to a machine in the hub and onward to the terminal where I view it or many others view it.

As far as secrecy I have a standard NDA (used really as a scare tactic) as well as various other contracts that forbid even discussing with a spouse what we do. We are instructed to tell people that we work on security software for use in government installations. (Not far from the truth)

pazcat: Sadly we have no control over what URL is displayed and we don't even know for sure what URL is being displayed but it usually can easily be guessed from various images on the site.

More replies to come in a moment. I have to head to work in about fifteen minutes though so I will be quick.

Alethea: We review whatever is sent to our terminal. Amazingly enough to date I haven't seen anything on Facebook. I'm not sure why that is or if another piece of software is used. I suspect different software is used in that case but sadly I am not familiar enough with how that works.

As far as blogs go I have seen several show up. Usually they are harmless but they show up often.

Forum postings also show up often as well. I'm still not 100% sure what triggers a review I just know certain words displayed in high volumes make items show up.

They keep what we can and can't see very secret. We basically can see the one URL in one window at a time and nothing more. What others rated a site can not even be seen by us. We usually forget what we rate a site as well so we can't discuss it outside of work as we see thousands a day and are expected to rate a quota of sites per day.

Thus leads me to another issue I have with this job. We are expected to review so quickly a mistake can easily be made and something overlooked.

As far as the popes secret arm... not likely

The sites that seem to come up the most are about weaponry and strong middle eastern sites. This has been the case since I started on this project but we've heard rumors of that possibly changing because it hasn't been effective.

For me I rarely ever label something unsafe and from what I know of others who are doing this job neither do they. It seems we are simply wasting time and money.

My personal criteria would be something that outright calls for a terrorist attack though. They leave it vague intentionally though as to what is unsafe.

Th0r: This was taken at work in a really well lit room but it was taken with a camera phone with low resolution and then uploaded to a site not exactly known for quality. I can try to get another video and each room is intentionally quiet. I appreciate the skepticism though.

Our buildings are intentionally nondescript though. The one I work in is between two stores and has about 30 people in it. I believe the numbers are kept low on purpose and from the outside it just appears to be another low profile local business.

dizziedame: Thanks I like to believe that! I'm so use to the these are the rules you live or die by them mentality at work that I'm not sure what to think anymore.

I am heading off to my job now in my nondescript Midwest work place. I'll try to get on here later tonight or during my one hour lunch I'll go to the park and get online via my phone or something.

Thank you for taking time to give us answers.
One more Qu3$+ion 1 h@v3 is +hi$.
If I change words to read as above, will the hub still pick it up if it's a "B" word or a "T" word? Does it make any difference to try to disguise your words?

Thanx.

PS. What do you have to do for a "bonus".
What sort of incentives do they give you for finding a good "hit"?


[edit on 2-12-2009 by Alethea]

Spooky seems nice

So...countdown until the big breaking story that will have us all on the edges of our seats?

I'm going for a slow burner here. 2 weeks I'd say.

Interesting tale either way - thanks Spooky!

-m0r

Serious question,

How did you get this job?

Thank you

reply to post by formerspook


wow! that looks like easy work! where do I sign up?

so were you a witness to the ufo at o'hare?

[edit on 2-12-2009 by reject]

We all need to be cautious about what we ask and how, especially on this thread, a revelation perhaps ? a fishing net perhaps ? I know that most ATSers are savvy to these things, but by being too specific in questions may inadvertantantly put ourselves on the radar. It may all be bunk, we shall see, or it may be real whistleblowing, either way we will need to think thrice about the content of our posts, especially on this thread !

I would guess ATS is watched and if he is real someone will squawk on him post haste.

Great info, I applaud the kahunas you must have to do such a thing..and I am guessing you will live up to your username pretty fast.

Nice video, pity about the black background, if it was a well lite room as you said, you should be able to see things near and around the monitor.

Also - how exactly did you manage to use a mobile in a secured area that would be alarmed for mobile transmissions????

And yes - I have/do work in high security areas, and I have been inside US secure areas. They all have these alarms.

Originally posted by Qwenn
We all need to be cautious about what we ask and how, especially on this thread, a revelation perhaps ? a fishing net perhaps ? I know that most ATSers are savvy to these things, but by being too specific in questions may inadvertantantly put ourselves on the radar. It may all be bunk, we shall see, or it may be real whistleblowing, either way we will need to think thrice about the content of our posts, especially on this thread !

I ain't afeared o' no ghosts!

What would you say is a question that might be too specific to ask? Could you give me an example? I mean I know he's not going to tell us the name of the company. But other than that, what would be "too specific" to ask?