re Foreword: Internet & social control

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.indyweek.com/durham/current/triangles.html>

"The FBI has been reading my diary"
 
A student is mistakenly targeted as an investigation
blurs the line between local and federal law
enforcement 

B Y   J O N   E L L I S T O N 

For Erin Carter, a junior at Chapel Hill High School,
it seemed like just another Friday. She went to class,
and in her off time, thought about what to post on her
web log, or "blog." Part journal and part sounding
board, Carter called it "Text into Nothing." She'd
launched it last December, and considered it a space
for venting her observations and frustrations, an
online diary of sorts. 

[...]  Carter says she told 10 or 15 friends about her
blog, and didn't intend for it to reach a wider
audience. "It was really personal," she says. But it
wasn't, as she learned when two men who appeared to be
FBI agents showed up at school and gave her the third
degree about what she'd written. 

Called out of sixth period to the principal's office
on the afternoon of May 2, Carter assumed that she was
about to be busted for skipping class or some
similarly minor offense. But soon it was clear that
something else was going on, something potentially
much more serious. Along with Principal Mary Ann
Hardebeck, Carter found herself sitting in a room with
two law officers wearing navy blue shirts that bore
the logo of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

The two lawmen held a sheaf of paper. "They had my
journal printed out," Carter says. "A good stack of
it, and I could tell that there were a lot of things
highlighted." 

Why were supposed FBI agents asking about a student's
blog? [...] 

"They weren't very friendly at all," Carter says, and
they didn't become any friendlier when she started
grilling them about why they were investigating her
blog. [...] 

Freaked out by what she thought was a brush with the
feds, Carter went home and decided to close down her
experiment with online expression. True to its name,
"Text into Nothing" disappeared with a few commands
from Carter's keyboard. In its place, she posted a
farewell missive that warned her readers to lie low:
"To anyone who has ever posted on my journal: I am
sorry. The FBI most likely has your IP address and
your blog address/e-mail address if you posted that.
The FBI has been reading my diary." [...] 

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