Your Lawnmower could be spying on you!

[Daboo]

I'm a conspiracy theorist at heart. I remember reading the Left Behind books and how they were able to stay under the radar of Nicolae Carpathia's police state. That would be impossible today. Yet those books were written only a short time ago.

Enemy of State was a great movie of two guys trying to evade the CIA...back in 1998. What they showed on how you can be tracked is eye-opening...and yet that was what they were allowed to show the public. What would it be like if we knew the full extent of what can be tracked?

I just did a search using the Brave search engine. (FWIW, the Brave browser works to protect your privacy.) Anyway, here's some of what it said when I asked if Federal government agencies can buy your data to avoid needing a search warrant.

Yes, the FBI can purchase personal and location data from commercial brokers without a search warrant.

Despite Supreme Court rulings like Carpenter v. United States requiring warrants for direct government access to historical cell-site location information, federal agencies exploit a legal loophole by buying this data from third-party data brokers. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed in March 2026 that the agency actively purchases commercially available information, arguing these transactions are consistent with the Constitution and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

• Legal Justification: Privacy experts and legal scholars debate whether this constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, but current precedent often treats it as a private transaction rather than state action, allowing agencies to bypass probable cause requirements.
• Scope of Data: This practice allows the FBI and other agencies (such as DHS and ICE) to acquire granular data on Americans' movements, associations, and habits derived from mobile apps and internet advertising.

Note those phrases:

• the agency actively purchases commercially available information
• granular data on Americans' movements,
• associations, and habits derived from mobile apps and internet advertising.

We don't have to look far back in history to see where citizens of a country were rounded up in the middle of the night because the gov't decided to get rid of them (Kristallnacht). It kind of goes along with the statement Ben Franklin made: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Chris

 

[ST Gui]

We don't have to look far back in history to see where citizens of a country were rounded up in the middle of the night because the gov't decided to get rid of them

We don't have to look far either. Japanese were rounded up, interred, and their property sold off pennies on the dollar. A bit of a silver lining on a dark era we got the 442d Regimental Combat Team.

Rarely has a nation been so well served by a people it had so ill-treated…They did more
than defend America; in the face of painful prejudice, they helped to define America
at its best.

–President Bill Clinton