Ciao!

Perhaps your website has shown up on intel radars. Wouldn't be surprised if there have been some cloaked visits from Langley, VA. The political info and analyses that you write about small, unstable Bolivia, a major narcotics producer, might be valuable information to policymakers, I guess.

Not much current, open source material on Bolivia available here in the US, right? Particularly in English?

See
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ibd/20040427/bs_ibd_ibd/2004427tech

http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/040427/tech_1.html

Who knows, could be that there are bloggers even in the government?

But they shouldn't surf to your site during their working hours. :-)

... I agree with Marco , probably just some "lunch time" surfers reading up on Bolivia. :)

Why shouldn't they surf during work hours if there job has to do with South America and or Bolivia, natural gas, drug war, exchange rates, etc... If I'm paying taxes for people to run treasury and state, I want them to be informed.

--scott

Maybe Miguel's visitors are just lunchtime surfers. But then again, news reports surface regarding analysts' predictions that weblogs might be tracked for "cutting edge" information.

I'm not saying I believe that Miguel's weblog is monitored by intelligence or law enforcement. It is possible, however.

Bolivia is relevant regarding the drug trade, which finances many terrorist operations. Miguel provides very current information as to political goings-on, which would be useful to intelligence officials. It takes only a little digging to determine that he's a Fulbrighter completing a PhD in poli sci, thus credible.

If it is shown that law enforcement and intelligence in fact monitor weblogs (it's only been suggested so far), then I don't think it's unreasonable to infer that visits from agencies dealing in international affairs and intelligence may be harvesting information.

Miguel... the NSA knows you know something that they do not know and they want to know what it is that you know so they can know it as well.

No really, I am serious.

Miguel, it seems "they know what you did last summer" ;). I think your blog is a good source of political information about Bolivia, it wouldn't surprise me that they periodically collect all kinds of data from diverse sources and from various countries.

P.D. Just thought probably your Fullbright sponsors want to make sure that you are making good use of your time.

Miguel, I routinely get hits from domain names ending in .mil. I wouldn't read too much into it. Could be just a bored person interested in Bolivia.