Activist Requests Her FBI File, Learns What Color Hat She Was Wearing When She Went to See "Lord of the Rings"
Last year, a blogger, activist, and “amateur pornographer” named Furry Girl requested her FBI file on a lark. Last month, she got it and posted some of its highlights online.
Among other details, Furry Girl learned that she and a few others were followed for several days several years ago while they planned and participated in a small, legal protest. (She doesn’t specify what it was about—being an amateur pornographer, she’s sensitive about her whereabouts and activities—saying “It was the sort of thing activists do every month all around the world.”)
The 436-page file, which was begun in 2002, notes that she and her cohort neither planned to nor engaged in any illegal behavior—besides a little dumpster diving—but the FBI kept following them anyway:
It’s the surveillance detail where things get funny and weird. Eleven or twelve of us were followed by a group of 3-6 FBI agents over the course of five days, and there was often a detail sitting outside of my apartment, totally unbeknownst to me. (I feel like a total chump that I didn’t notice that I was being followed and photographed during this time.) I had never read law enforcement surveillance logs before, so it was interesting to comb through the pages.
The file notes, for example, that one day she left the house wearing an orange cap, kissed somebody, got in a car with some friends, and went to see Lord of the Rings. Then she and her friends left the movie theater while agents “attempted” to photograph them, went to the store, got a case of beer, went to someone’s house, and other boring stuff that people do.
This a warning to me.
Well… fuck.
This is… unsettling. To say the least.
