Thoughts on Conspiracy

I just want to take a moment to expand on something I touched on in my last post, The Bridge Theory:

There are many out there -- honestly, I've lost count -- who wonder if the investigation was deliberately suppressed or sabotaged. Perhaps I'm just naive. I tend to lean towards a much simpler explanation: the difficulty and confusion of coordinating a kidnap and murder investigation in a war zone.

The person(s) responsible for the disappearance of Kirk von Ackermann and the murder of Ryan Manelick have the most to gain with any sort of interference or disruption to communications. Assuming the person(s) are not insurgents, it would not surprise me to learn that they monitor what they can of the investigation by any means available to those person(s). As a result, the possibility of malicious intent can not be ignored. After all, chances are good that if you have a sneaking suspicion someone is intercepting or monitoring your email, that yes, some one is intercepting or monitoring your email.

Not Alone

I think some of you would be quite surprised at the number of people who think there's something seriously funky surrounding everything.

Now regarding the investigation, do I believe CID deliberately dragged their feet? No. But I do get the feeling their resources are extremely limited. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women in the US military in addition to hundreds of thousands of civilian contractors.

Q. How many people are in CID?
A. CID is a worldwide command with fewer than 2000 Soldiers and civilians and approximately 900 special agents.

Advice, for what it's worth, just use some basic common sense. Share your information with trusted friends or colleagues, keep sensitive information off of shared networks, back up files to discs, print information and keep hard copies. Last but not least, always assume any email is archived and monitored as it passes through mail servers. If it's keeping you awake at at night, considering using an encryption product.

Additional Reading

Crime in the United States
Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program
Department of Justice, FBI, 2004