Usage Statistics for la.indymedia.org

In September the LA Indymedia website got more than 2 million and a half hits. The daily average for the same month was more than 87 thousand hits.

One of the two tech persons who takes care of the website has said that the numbers were really good.

... how many of those were from the FBI, Homeland Security, LAPD, Garden Grove and Baldwin Park PD, etc.? ;-D

As long as "they" learn something. If LA IMC is any indication of intelligence involving both bloggers and audience, its surely a good indicator.

So who cares if its government pyops, or some other information gathering agency.

Current circumstances reminds me of the case Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1 (1972), and the dissenting opinion of justice Douglas...



"Army intelligence has been maintaining an unauthorized watch over civilian political activity for nearly 30 years. Nor is this the first time that [408 U.S. 1, 28] Army intelligence has, without notice to its civilian superiors, overstepped its mission. From 1917 to 1924, the Corps of Intelligence Police maintained a massive surveillance of civilian political activity which involved the use of hundreds of civilian informants, the infiltration of civilian organizations and the seizure of dissenters and unionists, sometimes without charges. That activity was opposed - then as now - by civilian officials on those occasions when they found out about it, but it continued unabated until post-war disarmament and economies finally eliminated the bureaucracy that conducted it." Pp. 29-30.

This case involves a cancer in our body politic. It is a measure of the disease which afflicts us. Army surveillance, like Army regimentation, is at war with the principles of the First Amendment. Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage. The First Amendment was designed to allow rebellion to remain as our heritage. The Constitution was designed to keep government off the backs of the people. The Bill of Rights was added to keep the precincts of belief and expression, of the press, of political and social activities free from surveillance. The Bill of Rights was designed to keep agents of government and official eavesdroppers away from assemblies of people. The aim was to allow men to be free and independent and to assert their rights against government. There can be no influence more paralyzing of that objective than Army surveillance. When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist's shoulder in the library, or walks invisibly by his side in a picket line, or infiltrates his club, the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is [408 U.S. 1, 29] cast in the image which Jefferson and Madison designed, but more in the Russian image, depicted in Appendix III to this opinion."

Case URL...

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=408&invol=1

The people I have been overhearing in a restaurant or at a mall, are talking more and more of world and political events, and from what I hear, most of them are very unhappy and finally questioning the impact it has upon their llives.

Some are venturing out looking for more information, and an outlet like LA IMC is the only alternative news blog that allows individual participation and the sharing of commentary.

Whoever is LA IMC...don't stop !

It's great to hear about the number of hits. However, that's not the same as number of people accessing the site right? For example, if there's a protest going on in LA that I want to stay current with, I might check the site 3 times in one day....

often they count by individual IP (although it doesn't look like that here but you can still divide the total by average pages viewed per visit then that by IP)

Agencies most often use robots which archive the site - they then datamine the results, in any case they (considering the total) only make up a tiny percentage of all the hits which Ned knows - he was just trying to plant paranoia and downplay the news...