"Big Brother is Everywhere"..Orson Wells, 1984...

I think that the government has, and will continue to monitor its population. Though I seriously doubt every thing written or spoken is looked at. They have computers that filtered though all the 'junk' looking for specific phrases or words. Someone looks at it and it goes from there. I couldn't care less if they listen through my phone or watch the sites I go to. I just think it is sad that the government fears its own population. Of course, some actions show that they are also not afraid of us.

I can't help but wonder how many lowly NSA officials I've bored to sleep.

[agnostic.com]

Of course they are. Yoohoo! NSA, I am pulling down my online pants and mooning you!

I hope so.

Not likely .

If you're thinking it's only metadata check out this article

[news.stanford.edu]

The NSA and various internet providers have publicly confirmed that the NSA does collect a great deal of information. That includes cell phone records with GPS and call logs, full email metadata, social media platforms friends circles.

Oddly enough the post office automatic sorting machines log facility, date/time, and return address as well as delivery address.

They never publicly addressed it, but I would assume that they also collect Visa, Mastercard, American Express records, along with the Ancestry and Geni family tree databases.

Not to mention IRS and state government databases.

The days of "watching" websites such as this one (which would be considered very low-risk and unlikely to merit closer attention) are long gone. Nowadays, they rely on using computers to monitor the entire internet and algorithms to recognise certain keywords and strings of words. If one of us were to say something that might feasibly be a hint that we had a plan in place to carry out a political assassination or something similar, various agencies would no doubt take a look. Some individual users may be of interest, depending on what they get up to elsewhere online; but as things stand, the site isn't likely to be of much interest to the NSA, CIA, the Secret Intelligence Service, Mossad or the aliens.

yes

Who do you think runs this site?

Not all of the site - just YOUR posts

They have large networks of super computers monitoring all communications worldwide. Other countries have the same thing, all looking for keywords. When flagged, additional focus on a particular group or individual will receive more scrutiny. We can assume that some here may be flagged.

Why would they? I hadn’t thought about it...I’m not very paranoid about anything. Much less my online activity being watched...I pity the fool who has to read all my stuff!

Of course