{"id":7,"date":"2008-08-07T17:12:49","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T21:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2008-10-13T10:39:13","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T18:39:13","slug":"cia-watchlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/07\/cia-watchlist-7\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA Watchlist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was checking the statistics for visits to my website<\/span><\/a>, and reviewed the list of referring URLs. Those are the pages from which a visitor clicked on a link to reach my website. One of them jumped right out at me: On July 5th, a few hours after I had been waving my little flag during my town’s 4th of July parade, my site got a visit from the CIA.<\/p>\n

Specifically, the referring URL was www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc<\/strong>2efki~4<\/span><\/a>*. I tried that with “http:\/\/” and was redirected to a page that informed me, “CIA.gov is now encrypted, except for our Electronic Reading Room, to assure visitor confidentiality. As a result, the Web address for pages and documents in our site has changed from http:\/\/ to https:\/\/”. So instead I tried, https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>, but got, “The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it.”<\/p>\n

Next I turned to the IP address in the original log files*. A “ping -a” resolved all three to 75-106-192-56.cust.wildblue.net<\/span><\/a> (or a slight variation based on the IP address. So apparently someone using their account at Wild Blue (a satellite broadband ISP) was reviewing www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a> and clicked a link that took them to my website. According to the logs, they only visited my site’s homepage. Guess my work doesn’t speak to spooks.<\/p>\n

I was going to pretend this didn’t happen, but I went from freaked out to pissed off pretty quickly. Am I just being paranoid? I’ve done about all the research I can without raising any (more) red flags….<\/p>\n

———————-
\n* Original log file entries:
\n75.106.192.56 – – [05\/Jul\/2008:13:35:51 -0400] “GET \/ HTTP\/1.1” 200 4049 www.postdiluvianphoto.com <\/span><\/a>“https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>” “-” “-”
\n75.106.192.38 – – [05\/Jul\/2008:13:35:52 -0400] “GET \/postdiluvian.css HTTP\/1.1” 200 441 www.postdiluvianphoto.com<\/span><\/a> “https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>” “-” “-”
\n75.106.192.38 – – [05\/Jul\/2008:13:35:54 -0400] “GET \/images\/mosquito.jpg HTTP\/1.1” 200 85935 www.postdiluvianphoto.com<\/span><\/a> “https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>” “-” “-”
\n75.106.192.56 – – [05\/Jul\/2008:13:35:54 -0400] “GET \/images\/definition.jpg HTTP\/1.1” 200 11055 <\/a>www.postdiluvianphoto.com “https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>” “-” “-”
\n75.106.192.36 – – [05\/Jul\/2008:13:35:54 -0400] “GET \/images\/spikes.jpg HTTP\/1.1” 200 159183 www.postdiluvianphoto.com<\/span><\/a> “https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>” “-” “-”
\n75.106.192.56 – – [05\/Jul\/2008:13:36:00 -0400] “GET \/favicon.ico HTTP\/1.1” 200 894 www.postdiluvianphoto.com<\/span><\/a> “https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/internalmemos\/watchlist.doc2efki~4<\/span><\/a>” “-” “-“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was checking the statistics for visits to my website, and reviewed the list of referring URLs. Those are the pages from which a visitor clicked on a link to reach my website. One of them jumped right out at me: On July 5th, a few hours after I had been waving my little flag […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPxQO-7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}