• Members of the previous forum can retrieve their temporary password here, (login and check your PM).

Homeland Security Manual Lists Government Key Words For Monitoring Social Media, News

Migrated topic.
۩

۩

.
Senior Member
OG Pioneer
Senior member
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/homeland-security-manual_n_1299908.html/

I thought this article was rather interesting.

Ever complain on Facebook that you were feeling "sick?" Told your friends to "watch" a certain TV show? Left a comment on a media website about government "pork?"

If you did any of those things, or tweeted about your recent vacation in "Mexico" or a shopping trip to "Target," the Department of Homeland Security may have noticed.

In the latest revelation of how the federal government is monitoring social media and online news outlets, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has posted online a 2011 Department of Homeland Security manual that includes hundreds of key words (such as those above) and search terms used to detect possible terrorism, unfolding natural disasters and public health threats. The center, a privacy watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request and then sued to obtain the release of the documents.

The 39-page "Analyst's Desktop Binder" used by the department's National Operations Center includes no-brainer words like ""attack," "epidemic" and "Al Qaeda" (with various spellings). But the list also includes words that can be interpreted as either menacing or innocent depending on the context, such as "exercise," "drill," "wave," "initiative," "relief" and "organization."

These terms and others are "broad, vague and ambiguous" and include "vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters," stated the Electronic Privacy Information Center in letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.
Click to expand...
 
I don't think there is any need to monitor these sort of things. You could take the range of words that would lead to terrorism and expand them however far you want.
 
I'm always inclined to think that whatever little bit comes out as news is only the tip of the iceberg. A better list to be released, and maybe wikileaks will get it eventually, would be the complete list of "persons of interest" (of all the varying degrees) that is on record with the American intelligence agencies. Of course there would be logistical problems with releasing such a list, which could hopefully be overcome in order to show us the scale and reasoning behind it without compromising anyones safety by releasing X amount (whether it's thousands, hundreds of thousands or more likely millions) of names on the internet. I think society would probably be shocked at how large it is, and how few of the people on it are "terrorists". Al Qaeda aren't planning attacks on Facebook. The protocols used by these people cannot be searched. I can't see any reason for the intelligence agencies to do this other than to keep tabs on "dissident" behaviour at home. I think, for them, dissident would include anyone who is a possible threat to their power (or likely to become part of a possible threat, like OWS).

That could be fringing on CT, but I think it is grounded enough in reality that it's ok.
 
Back
Top Bottom