www.weedguru.com

This is the third site on growing / pot / etc to close in 6 weeks. Overgrow was another. Rick was the owner and admin of HC.com, and he shut down the site and removed the servers and backup data from the colocation to protect the members and himself from potential legal issues.

Here is the latest news on this topic:

This is the full letter he wrote before shutting down the site, removing the server from the colocation, and hiding it on advice from his lawyer. While it may be true that nothing can happen to *this* site, two of the largest sites in the world have been closed in less than a month. This is a result of direct pressure by US law enforcement in cooperation with nations which have extridation treaties with the US (thats almost all nations). In the case of Overgrow.com, the owner was actually arrested and extredited to the US for criminal prosecution for conspiracy to commit crimes (felony charges) as well RICO violations, and growing 10 or so personal plants. He faces up to 60+ years in prison in the US, and he is a Canadian...

Anyways, here is his letter in full:

My Dear Friends, I miss you all so very much already.
I tearfully have to inform you of my decision to end the HempCultivation.Com Community. I've always held our Communities security as the most important aspect of my position as developer. I can no longer feel as though this Community is safe & secure. I assure you, we've had no security compromise. This a proactive move based on my own decisions.

I have consulted family, friends and business partners regarding this decision and I have taken all their advice to heart. I'm thankful I have them here for me. This decision has not come easily for me. As many of you know, HempCultivation.Com was my garden. I now understand what it means to have to destroy something you love so much. I'm sorry for everyone else who is doing the same.

I'll be immediately deleting all information from HempCultivation.Com server and physically removing the server from the collocation site. You're identities have always been and will always continue to be safe with me. And for your trust you have shown over me for the past 5 years, I am truly grateful to each and every one of you. It's heartwarming to think of the friends I've had because of our HempCultivation.Com.

I can no longer guarantee that I can protect you and our community. You all deserve much better and for that I am sorry. I hope you all can understand the reasons behind this decision and how much it pains to me make it.

Be Safe

I love you all~

~r

P.S. I'll setup a forum on Marijuana.Com for meets and greets -

EDIT: After some good advice from a concerned friend I've decided to encrypt and relocate the HempCultivation.Com database until I have a chance to sit down and speak with a lawyer and ensure that we are not in any violation of Federal or International laws, including RICO and MAPA Acts.


Gooster [/b]

another one bites the dust...im not to familiar with HC but did they also sell seeds? that seems to be what gets these guys in trouble. at least HC isnt leaking member info to the police, not yet at least

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/qc/comm/2006/ ... 228a_e.htm

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s ... hub=Canada

http://www.canadanewswire.ca/en/release ... c2334.html

the online seed business is going down fast...canadian law enforcement seems to be on the ball with everything thats going on. i just dont understand why all these places have gone down at about the same time

This is an attempt to emphasize the importance of taking site security *VERY* seriously, if you think you are safe, please read on, and make your own decisions. I think this site is so small and as it doesnt sell seeds or anything that it is not currently a target, but I do believe it is being datamined (read on) and that at some point in the future you may get a knock on your door if you arent careful.

For those of you who dont keep up with this stuff (I do, I have a degree in International Relations with an emphasis in Intelligence Agencies and Covert Political Warfare) Admiral Poindexter (felon from Reagan administration, who was granted a Presidential pardon for his illegal activities in Iran Contra and other illegal activities, violating the Boland Amendment, etc) resurfaced a few years ago (before 9/11) as the leader of a new government program called "Total Information Awareness".

This is a data gathering operation on all US citizens and citizens of other nations. They corilated credit card spending, driving records, criminal arrests, occupations, interests, travel habits, library records (books you checked out) photos, phone calls, cell phone records, computer information from purchases to what IP you use to what sites you post on, yes really its true. The idea is to create a profile on everyone in the US where the government can predict and react (proactive) to anyone who they consider a threat. One of the most interesting elements was the stated purpose, "The system, developed under the direction of John Poindexter, then-director of DARPA's Information Awareness Office, was envisioned to give law enforcement access to private data without suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant.
Data they admitted to gathering included, "The project called for the development of "revolutionary technology for ultra-large all-source information repositories," which would contain information from multiple sources to create a "virtual, centralized, grand database." This database would be populated by transaction data contained in current databases such as financial records, medical records, communication records, and travel records as well as new sources of information. Also fed into the database would be intelligence data.

In a speach convicted felon Poindexter, the man in charge of this government program had the following to say http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindexter.html

Strangely enough, Poindexter, the felon, also OWNS a major share of the company which received the contract for this TIA program, http://www.syntek.com here is a little information on what they do (in cooperation with TIA, which the government pays for to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars)
"Capabilities
Power Systems & Automation
Information Intelligence & Advanced Technology
Ship Systems
Systems Analysis Technology & Innovation
Information Intelligence & Advanced Technology Division
VP, John Tozzi
Focuses on solutions that provide collaborative, structured argumentation for workgroups at all levels of the enterprise.
High-level work involving modeling and recognizing aberrant human behavior.
All manner of future technologies, including organic light emitting diodes and ultra large lighter-than-air vehicles."

Human ID at a Distance program has already been impliemnted. This is a database which was constructed by accessing all the States in the US information regarding Driver's License information and non-driver ID, Social Security information and any additional information such as job applications, security clearence information, arrest information, banking records, etc. This program allows for computer image analysis of physical features of people in realtime, the first trial which was a huge success was the Superbowl in 2000 when everyone who entered as spectators were (without their knowledge or permission) compared in realtime to Human ID program, and resulted in over 200 arrests of people in the stadium for outstanding warrants or suspicion of violations of the law, particularly RICO violators and people wanted under the "drug kingpin" statute, and several members of organized crime families. This information regarding the fact that everyone entering the stadium was being video recorded and compared to the database in the Human ID program was never made public, it came to light in Senate hearings regarding TIA and some Freedom of Information Act documents requested by attorneys representing the accused. To date no major news agency has addressed this, and it is a clear violation of the 14th Amendment,

"Amendment XIV
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Here is a review of the TIA, found at http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/

You can also access the TIA website at http://www.darpa.mil

Introduction about Total Information Awareness and its role:

In November 2002, the New York Times reported that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was developing a tracking system called "Total Information Awareness" (TIA), which was intended to detect terrorists through analyzing troves of information. The system, developed under the direction of John Poindexter, then-director of DARPA's Information Awareness Office, was envisioned to give law enforcement access to private data without suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant.

TIA purported to capture the "information signature" of people so that the government could track potential terrorists and criminals involved in "low-intensity/low-density" forms of warfare and crime. The goal was to track individuals through collecting as much information about them as possible and using computer algorithms and human analysis to detect potential activity.

The project called for the development of "revolutionary technology for ultra-large all-source information repositories," which would contain information from multiple sources to create a "virtual, centralized, grand database." This database would be populated by transaction data contained in current databases such as financial records, medical records, communication records, and travel records as well as new sources of information. Also fed into the database would be intelligence data.

A key component of the TIA project was to develop data-mining or knowledge discovery tools that would sort through the massive amounts of information to find patterns and associations. TIA would also develop search tools such as Project Genoa, which Admiral Poindexter's former employer Syntek Technologies assisted in developing. TIA aimed to fund the development of more such tools and data-mining technology to help analysts understand and even "preempt" future action.

A further crucial component was the development of biometric technology to enable the identification and tracking of individuals. DARPA had already funded its "Human ID at a Distance" program, which aimed to positively identify people from a distance through technologies such as face recognition or gait recognition. A nationwide identification system would have been of great assistance to such a project by providing an easy means to track individuals across multiple information sources.

DARPA's Broad Agency Announcement 02-08 soliciting proposals from industry stated that the initial plan was for a five year research project into these various technologies. The interim goal was to build "leave-behind prototypes with a limited number of proof-of-concept demonstrations in extremely high risk, high payoff areas."

In September 2003, Congress eliminated funding for the controversial project and closed the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, which had developed TIA. This does not, however, necessarily signal the end of other government data-mining initiatives that are similar to TIA. Projects such as the Novel Intelligence from Massive Data within the Intelligence Community Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) will apparently move forward. The FBI and the Transportation Security Administration are also working on data-mining projects that will fuse commercial databases, public databases, and intelligence data and had meetings with TIA developers.

Gooster, who knows what he is talking about

aaaah! fuck the fucking police...do you really think this could be a threat to non-growers? that would mean that its possible to be persecuted for something that you said on the internet.

Weedguru DrGreenthumb wrote:aaaah! fuck the fucking police...do you really think this could be a threat to non-growers? that would mean that its possible to be persecuted for something that you said on the internet.

You nailed it man. This datamining is designed to record as much of the net traffic on boards as possible. Prioritized of course, prolly terrorism, then prolly conspiracy to commit crimes (which I suppose it could be argued that the topic of how to teach people to grow pot, which is a crime, could be argued as conspiracy felony.) Right now they are just collecting everything they can, and running 'smart' programs which look for keywords (car bomb, bin laudin, pipe bomb, assassination, iraq, al queda, hijack, airport, dirty bomb, uranium, detonate, kidnap, underage girls, marajuana!) that should definately qualify this post for keyword searches. The next step is to analyize the content for logical meaning. This post could / should very well now be identified as having keywords that ADVISE and CARNIVORE will hit. So now the post will be checked for meaning. Since the words are all listed in a row, there is little to indicate that it is an actual threat. Further examination, however, of my posts (since I have been flagged by having qualifying keywords) would reveal that I have advised people on how to commit a crime, to wit growing pot. This could constitute a criminal conspiracy. The next step would be (since my keywords have alerted the ADVISE software to me, and by extension this site) to analyize the site for content. Again it is all software driven. We find photos of pot growing - further evidence that this site is actively participating in a criminal conspiracy which is defined as an intentional series of actions or words or instructions designed to both break the law and (worse) the intent is to not simply break the law but to *plan* and demonstrate that the purpose here is to assist others in *planning* (future tense, is important in defining a conspiracy, to continue to break the law.

So to answer your question, yes. Right now there is so much data being collected that it takes a LOT of computer power to simply search for keywords let alone follow up with further analysis, and even more rare to escalate to human intervention (arrests) such as what *may* have happened to OG.com

Dont panic, my keywords are not going to cause anything different than what has already occured, or will occur. I used to use a .sig of random keywords on the FBI terrorist list, between 4 and 10 words randomly picked each email or post. I never heard from the FBI, I figure I wont for a few years yet.

While my tone may be a bit flippant, I am deadly serious. Google ADVISE and TIA and CARNIVORE.

Gooster

people are getting killed on the streets, raped in the schools, governments going to shit, politicians are lying to us, people in the US are starving, medicine isnt affordable, and terrorist own our ports...meanwhile law enforcement is ruthlessly hunting down people that talk about growing marijuana on the internet. a substance that doesnt kill and is more beneficial than anything else.

i couldn't agree more

A very close friend of mine, who grew up in a mafia area and moved to the Uk 9 years ago, would always say to me 'don’t use your card so much when you pay for things'..At first i found it strange but I could see he wasn’t joking when every time he paid for something it would be in cash...I think in the 4 years we were together in Brighton , I saw him pay for something by card maybe twice...
I took up the same practice for a while till i lapsed back into my old habits of using plastic ALL THE FUCKING TIME...The supermarket where we used to work, had profiles of all the customers(who had used a credit/debit/loyalty card in the store)..Of course they did and do, it is in their financial interests to know what kind of people buy what and when...Now if Sainsburys (a HUGE UK supermarket chain, 2nd only to Tesco i think) creates profiles, and quite in depth profiles, of their customers, imagine what kind of profiles the government has on their secret computers.
Now for sure, the government (in the UK) has access to most if not all corporate profile databanks..I would expect them to be connected into one huge database, which shows the government an illegally clear picture of who each person IS and what each person DOES..they are not only tracing money, they are tracing people’s lives. This smacks terribly of THEM and US (you and me, not the fucked up states of america); the people who elect the government are seen (by the very fuckers they elect)as mindless clones who are happy to be controlled, to be herded like sheep, to have their lives mapped out for them from start to finish..fuck that..its depressing and true but hardly worth dwelling on, or maybe that’s exactly why the world is so fucked up?I mean there are so many people who are GOOD but who let themselves and the world that created them, that gave them the life that they live..Yes, they let that down..They dont give it any respect or acknowledgment. Live for yourself, and let the government sort out the rest??
My attitude used to be 'ill just smoke and try live a peaceful life forgetting about he true woes of the world' but after reading the work of some seriously wise men, I had to change my outlook to 'evil persists only when the GOOD ignore it'..yes i know there’s a famous and better constructed phrase than that one, which says the same thing...Anyway, yeh it seems weak to me, maybe a heavy enough weakness to make me think a GOOD person bad...guilty by lack of acknowledgment/action????

Sorry. This was supposed to be comparing the profiling in the UK to this terrible profiling we see proof of now in US. I was intending to get round to this dilemma:
Yeh in the Uk, you can make your tracks far less visible, just by ALWAYS paying for stuff in cash...but how the fuck can we stop the profiling on the internet????Or we just can’t; without cutting edge knowledge vis-à-vis masking our own virtual footyprints??????

Well that’s enough for my input..

On a lighter note..Mr Valdez asked me to ask you, Goo, if you would consider becoming his editor/writing teacher...

Fucking po'. Does this only count for america land? Or is Canadia also going to suffer. I diddnt read the whole thing and i'm ripped. So yeah.

yea this is bullshit.....tobacco and alchohol are so much more damaging yet the fuckin government practically endorses that shit. to bad bush doesnt use his "holy" bible to legalize weed, considering that it says its good for you or whatever. but thats fuckin government for you.