International terrorism (slight) scare

July 7, 2008

My wife recently recieved an email which, while poorly written, had enough information in it to potentially cause someone monitoring emails (if that really happens) to look twice and read on.

Long story short, my wife is originally from the UK.

OK - maybe not *that* short.

One of her friends there is having a fight with her uncle over the care of her grandmother (the uncle’s mother).  Following me so far?  He’s been harrassing my wife’s friend for several months, and had told her he would start to involve my wife.  Today he did that.

She received an email asking if she could “put Semtex (sic) in her mini foods”.  Implying that might wife could (or might) smuggling explosives on an international flight would be enough, but he went further, suggesting he was going to prevent her friend from coming to America by alleging Bin Laden and Muslim sympathies.  He then suggested that he wished they would all die in a car crash, and that they (my wife’s friend and family) “should be wiped off the face of the earth”.

The email also said “I will be sending you more emails with trigger words in them to make sure they are picked up by the CIA…” and various other agencies.   The man in question is being investigated by the UK police for earlier harrassment, and now it’s extended to my wife.  So I called the local FBI office.

fbi.gov showed the closest office was Charlotte, which is strange, because Raleigh is the state capitol.  Why not have a Raleigh office?  Anyway, I called, and after explaining, was put through to an agent who said I should talk to the Raleigh office.  He transferred me.  Great!  The operator there put me through to a field agent, but suggested I also email in the offending email.  “Send it to raleighfbi@bellsouth.net”.  What the heck!!?  Our gov’t is too poor to set up email for a field office with a .gov domain?  Or does this just make it easier to filter and track all emails?  Or to perhaps nab *all* bellsouth.net email data whenever they need something?

The FBI agent I spoke with suggested I just write back to the original author and tell him to stop all contact.  Really, at this point, because he’s in England, and it appears to be a domestic dispute, there’s little that the FBI can do right now.

I can have a level head about this all I want, and dismiss it as the ravings of a nut.  *My* levelheadedness, though, is not what concerns me.  It’s the PATRIOT act, TSA, FBI and other agencies’ attitudes towards something they might pick up scanning communications (Echelon, anyone?).  Perhaps normal emails aren’t routinely scanned, but given that he’s already under investigation, and it’s an international email, and the often general incompetence of low-level government workers, I rather feared the worst.  My wife and I both travel internationally, so I wanted to nip this in the bud.  Having spoken to someone last year who was under investigation under the PATRIOT act, he had about 9 months of pure limbo (travel, work, personal life all affected) for an absolute goose chase.

I feel like we’re in an arms race of paranoia, and no matter how rational I can be about things, very little may be under my control when it comes down to it.  Perhaps I overreacted slightly, but given the state of the nation these days, I’m not sure this was an overreaction.

Posted in Personal