Is the government spying on me?

If so at least they read robots.txt!

[GaryK]

CE-Preload
143.81.0.48
—————
OrgName: Headquarters, USAAISC
OrgID: HEADQU-3
Address: NETC-ANC CONUS TNOSC
City: Fort Huachuca
StateProv: AZ
PostalCode: 85613-5000
Country: US
NetRange: 143.81.0.0 - 143.81.255.255
CIDR: 143.81.0.0/16
NetName: KUWAIT-NET1
NetHandle: NET-143-81-0-0-1
Parent: NET-143-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS01.ARMY.MIL
NameServer: NS02.ARMY.MIL
NameServer: NS03.ARMY.MIL
Comment:
RegDate: 1990-03-26
Updated: 2006-01-09

RTechHandle: AJS43-ARIN
RTechName: Saeed, Amer J
RTechPhone: [phone]
RTechEmail: [e-mail]
OrgTechHandle: MRM4-ARIN
OrgTechName: McDonald, Michael R.
OrgTechPhone: [phone]
OrgTechEmail: [e-mail]
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2006-02-04 19:10
# Enter? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
—————
02/01/2006 22:10:58 200 GET /robots.txt
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

[wilderness]

Hey Gary,
It's just an employee (either military or otherwise) browsing.

I get them frequently and they are (for the most part on topic).

The only ones that I deny are Homeland Security and obvious crawls.

I do recall some earlier crawlings by GSA, however I was unable to locate the documentation.

Don

[GaryK]

Normally I'd agree with you Don. Except it only took robots.txt. That's what made me suspicious. What about you?

[jdMorgan]

Note the country mentioned in the record. They are probably running a filtering proxy in the U.S. to vet the content viewable by personnell stationed over there as required by local law. If one sysadmin over there did a search for the kind of info you offer and found your site, that might trigger a visit, a la Websense -- a not-quite-real-time DNS-based whitelist/blacklist content filtering approach, that is.

Jim

[wilderness]

"What about you?"

Ocassionaly they'll grab robots.

There was a time (early on) when I was alarmed by these visits.

Were they not genearlly on topic visits, I might still be.

I'm unable unable to recall any such IP range ripping through my sites.

The military is not what it once was and the particpants have broad interests.

[GaryK]

My hobby site gets a lot of traffic from the military. It normally comes through a proxy server on some military base in Georgia. It's late and I can't recall the name, sorry. But it's nice to know they have some time to spend on fun stuff like model cars. I always write to new members who use a .mil address to thank them for their service and ask where they're from. Most of the time they can't tell me where they really are.

I have learned the user agent is part of some software package Cisco sells. I can't find the exact name of the product though. Any help with that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[larryhatch]

I worry more about spiders that DON'T ask for robots.txt than those that do. -Larry

[wilderness]

Any help with that would be greatly appreciated

Gary,
This site was a forum participant at one time. I should recall his name, however it escapes me (Duh!).

[psychedelix.com...]

Go to Cisco and use the search on the UA.
The results returned suggest the software is both a hosting and preload software.