Come on into the den, this weather is certainly different. And while this won't make some folks happy, I want the snow. So grab a seat and let this humble storyteller explain why he was once hunted by the FBI.
So back when I was much younger and even more of a romantic (imagine that!) I chased after a fairy tale down in Maine. But since I was young and wasn't that well behaved they decided to track me on my visit. I had to turn in a card when I came back across the border. So I did that and headed back to the Land of Living Skies, and got a job and started my fairy tale with the little bear's mama.
This was all fine until one day we get a call from mama's family back in Maine. Turns out the Canadian folks didn't send that card back to the States. So they had no record of me coming back across the border. So the FBI considered me AWOL from Canada and as I was a young man with a troubled past that meant I was unwanted in their beautiful country.
Now when we got back to Rejayjay, I ran across a fellow on a newsboard group that was interested in Socialism. Turns out he was a student at Rice University. So we exchanged a few emails about Socialism and political ideology.
Turns out this guy also happened to be into some hacker activities and got arrested for it. So when they confiscated his computer, they come across emails from someone who they track down and find out it's the same name as a guy they think is in their country and of bad moral character.
How did I find this out? Y'ever been visited by the RCMP Computer Crimes folks? I have. They wanted to make sure I wasn't a hacker too. I had a crappy 386 with 2 megs of ram and a 2400 baud modem. No hacker was I.
What do these two things equate to? An active file with the FBI!!
How did I find his out you ask? I crossed the border after this but had my car searched for no apparent reason. So I asked 'Why the hell are you guys suddenly treating me like a drug dealer?' 'Dunno about drugs, but our computers say you're a person of note to the FBI and so procedure is to search your car.'
Oh and a few months after that I received a letter saying I had an active FBI file and if I wanted to have it closed I'd have to get a lawyer to present a case to them on why. Woulda cost more money than it was worth.
In the end it was just erased because I don't go to the States that often and they have no real reason to watch me but somewhere in that big cavern of old files my name is in a few of them.
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