So, this past weekend some friends came over for a monthly get-together called "The Mutinous Video Club", wherein we take turns picking a movie to rent and then we watch and critique it as a group. This past weekend, one of the gang chose a movie I'd never seen called "Hackers." An enjoyably awful movie.

In the movie, the Secret Service/FBI goes around busting down doors, barging in as a large group, and sticking machine guns into people's faces within hours of some poor high school slob hacking into a computer system. Shortly thereafter, some corporate weasel (usually in the form of a hacker who is employed by a big corporation) plants evidence to frame the poor high school schmoley for crimes he, the corporate weasel, is committing, and then the FBI/Secret Service stupidly goes around doing the corporation's bidding. Thus, in this movie, students who go in and ruin computer systems for banks and television stations are the "heroes" and "victims", and the corporations and the cops who try to stop them are the "bad guys." But, I digress.

The point is, in this movie and others, law enforcement barges in with guns and shouting, willy nilly, to nab computer-related boogie-men.

So, getting back to my true story: a couple of weeks ago, Paulette had pointed out to me that an FBI guy (she saw a couple, but I ended up only seeing one) and a local cop were kinda walking around our building, knocking on a door or two, and just generally poking around. Just another day on the job. They didn't knock on our door, which was fine by me, but they certainly raised my curiousity.

As I left off the last installment, Paulette phoned me a few days later to tell me that a television news crew was sniffing around. They had, it turns out, rung *our* doorbell. The news crew had told Paulette that the FBI was cracking down on some big alleged internet nastiness, and had confiscated a computer or two from one of our neighbors, and would she care to comment?

Having worked in the news media, I wish I'd been the one who'd answered the door so that I could have closed the door in their faces. Paulette had no such prior experience, however. She did talk to them, but at least she was very, very vague. While this allowed them, during the "news" broadcast later in the day, to say something like "Neighbors are shocked and alarmed" before showing a cut of her saying "You never think it'll happen here" (how deliciously vague!), at least they didn't actually get someone to say something nasy on the air.

Why am I so concerned about this? Well, for a few reasons, but it mostly has to do with my belief that 1) making snap judgements on the basis of what a *news crew* tells you is, generally speaking, a bad idea, 2) we have good neighbors and, unless and until a court says otherwise, we're going to continue to expect that they are good neighbors. News crews can (and have) ruined a few lives along the way with accidental misreportings, and I won't be a party to it.

Anyway, after Paulette called, I came home (I was walking around the neighborhood, wrapping up some errands) and the news crew had left by then. She never saw any FBI on that particular day, despite the news reporter's claim. And, with the exception of our fierce curiousity, it became pretty much a day just like any other. (Although, other news crews came by later.)

My paranoia was just starting to calm down when I received a phone call a couple days later from an friend of mine at the Department of Justice (I'm not making this up). Back when my friend applied for his job with the DoJ, he had put me down as a reference for his background check. Anyway, he called me to say that the guy at the FBI with whom he'd spoken during the background check process had traced back to him because the FBI were looking at me and a neighbor of mine regarding some current case they're working on.

And I'm thinking, WHAT?!

Then I thought about the fact that I have a wireless network that's not encrypted, and maybe someone's been using my network for something nefarious, or who knows what, and my friend at the DoJ says that the FBI told him they'd already spoken with somebody at my house, and he thought it must have been me but maybe it was Paulette, and my brain is racing trying to recall if Paulette had mentioned anything about acutally talking to the FBI, because she might have.

While I'm puzzling all this out, my friend mentions that I was named during an arrest, but that the Feds were becoming a little skeptical of my involvement, because the source was pretty much trying to name anyone he could think of....

My DoJ friend said that while the other guy was being arrested, he was pretty frantic. Raving. He said that the cops practically had to drag him out of the house, because he was grabbing onto anything he could to keep from being pulled away. But, they grabbed onto his legs and pulled real hard and then, well, my alleged friend admitted that he was, in fact, pulling *my* leg.

"And that, your honor, is when I killed him."

He got me good. Matt, who asked not to be named, had read my "part 1" of this story and decided that I was good and ready for a major leg pull, and he was just the guy to do the pulling. And, boy did he get me.

Now, I imagine that both of you who bothered to read this little story were expecting this to be about my neighbor. Hope I didn't disappoint you, but my neighbor's story (if there is a story) is not mine to tell. Rather, it's about paranoia. Just another anecdote to while away the time.

But if there's one thing I learned from this episode, it is this: if you have the potential to be a little paranoid, as I do from time to time, be careful whom you tell. They just might be out to get you.