Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The government is stalking me.

Or, something strange is going on.
Yesterday, I visited the USDA website to get the full text of this year's Farm Bill and to email them regarding some clarifications I needed. I used the USDA's comment form, typed in my question with email address, and was on my way.
Frequent readers of this blog (both of you) will remember my post last week about SiteMeter, the tool attached to this blog which allows me to check up on who's reading this. So imagine my surprise when I checked my statistics an hour later to find:

Domain Name
usda.gov ? (U.S. Government)
IP Address 168.68.1.# (USDA Office of Operations)
ISP USDA Office of Operations
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Maryland
City : Bowie
Lat/Long : 38.9576, -76.7566 (Map)
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Firefox
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor
Resolution : 1280 x 1024
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit Oct 16 2007 10:29:45 am
Last Page View Oct 16 2007 10:29:45 am
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL
(my old blog)
Visit Entry Page http://natehamilton.blogspot.com/
Visit Exit Page http://natehamilton.blogspot.com/
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-6:00
Visitor's Time Oct 16 2007 10:29:45 am
Visit Number 97


Curiouser and curiouser. Not only did someone at the USDA office look at this page, but they got here through a link from my old blog! I've googled the heck out of this, and I can't find any way to get to EITHER blog from the information I provided in that email to the USDA.
It's not like I'm worried, I'm not sitting here typing anything too inflammatory - that is, until criticism of a sitting administration becomes an actual crime - but I am slightly bothered by the fact that someone in the USDA feels like they need to check up on me. Don't forget, as well, the million-dollar question: How did they even find my blogs? Did I miss something in the Patriot Act?
I'm angry and I'm actually going to call them on this - I'll email them back and see if I get any more hits on here. What I say in the internet is completely irrelevant to the question I've asked, wouldn't you agree?
But, to the United States Government - I don't need my question answered anymore. I haven't found the answer, but if you feel like you need to dig through my blogs to properly answer my question, I'll find another avenue, thank you very much. Go find something better to do with your time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My guess is that there's someone who sticks every name from their emails into a search engine, and that's how they came across your old blog. Google can cache, even if you deleted it.