You are undoubtedly right, someone just mentioned the Hive and any coincidence between the posts and the few rare arrests of the people on the board, so I demonstrated with a few links how easily the feds can monitor these sorts of boards.

There were only a few people on that entire board who ever ended up getting arrested, Elusis NOT being one of them (that was 100% unrelated) and the posts made by the few who did get arrested had absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, although I don't have WestLaw or Lexis in front of me, I'd be willing to bet that in most of these few cases, the law may not even realize that the people they arrested were participants on The Hive at all.

I agree that I went too far talking about recreational stuff, that was a (minor, in light of many other posts but nonetheless) mistake.

But as far as conversation regarding the security of posting on THIS board, I think the references to Hive are very relevent - they were unrelated to the arrests, and these are people who are openly discussing things that are unquestionablty illegal. One of them (actually one of the few who ended up arrested) posted a photo of himself holding up a 50 litre flask with the caption "WEAPON OF WAR" under it. These people were NOT subtle, and yet their posts had no correlation to their arrests. In the two major cases in fact, it was a woman who essentially broke down and "narked" as it were. The cops who made the arrests had almost certainly never even heard of The Hive before.

And once again, check out some of the boards that have been around for more years than the graphical Internet (heh) about security, which is now blatently illegal to even discuss now, under DMCA. Look at how heavily OPs advertise, and how many times a day do your junkmail accounts get hit with a "satellite service or digital cable for free!" email, and search around to find the BBS where people openly discuss these federal crimes.

My point, finally, is that the feds have read every word on this BBS since it started, and they will read every word posted on it until the operator decides to shut it down for whatever reason. They may use us as a sort of litmus paper - they may get a feeling for our society through our posts, and decide what miniscule percentage IF ANY of us are buying en masse and reselling, or committing other REAL crimes. But I think that any report written on this particular site would indicate that we are a small, very slow to grow subculture of people who are already very familiar with our own medical needs, and very few of us are hurting anyone or reselling scheduled drugs. Obviously they are right, and although posts like mine above about acid don't help, please note the "past-tense" tone in the overall reference to recreational usage.

I think I would like to add to the demographics that this site gives the feds that although it is far from the normal here, there ARE some us who use or who have used drugs recreationally, and even those of us who have are able to outgrow our young and irresponsible behavior and become productive, tax-paying voters.

Do you know anyone who has a teenage kid who uses drugs? Don't you hope that is how they turn out, even in a world where they can point and click narcotics, if they wanted to? Let's show the feds and their profilers that it happens.

BTW I love your avitar