What Do “Home Grown” “Exercise” “Tucson” And “Pork” Have In Common?

The government has a list of bad words they don’t want you to use in your “open source media”:

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

Actually I should rephrase my statement: they will consider you a threat if you use these words. But, our government:

… insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats. …

A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the [Analyst’s Desktop Binder] ”is a starting point, not the endgame” in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.

You can see the lists below.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Analyst’s Desktop Binder opens with the following:

Analyst’s Desktop Binder|2011

1. Media Monitoring Capability Mission & Reporting Parameters:

1.1 MMC Mission

The MMC has three primary missions:

• First – to continually update existing National Situation Summaries (NSS) and InternationalSituation Summaries (ISS) with the most recent, relevant, and actionable open source media information
• Second – to constantly monitor all available open source information with the goal of expeditiously alerting the NOC Watch Team and other key Department personnel of emergent situations
• Third – to receive, process, and distribute media captured by DHS Situational Awareness Teams (DSAT) or other streaming media available to the NOC such as Northern Command’s (NORTHCOM) Full Motion Video (FMV) and via open source.

 I do not feel comfortable with this at all. I believe that our government is covertly spying on us, U.S. citizens, and that it is doing so illegally without warrants. Anyone not believing this, please read the article I reprinted from Wired’s exposé of the NSA’s new super spy complex in Utah (“Utah Data Center”]. 

If you believe that they are justified in doing this for purposes of national security and that we are all safe because they are good guys and are acting nobly and virtuously, then you are reading the wrong blog. If history has taught us anything it is that government is The Violator of human rights. That is why our Constitution tried to put a lid on their power.

Does writing this put me on a list? Does it put you on a list? Actually I would love to trick them into spying on me illegally and then sue them. Think of the status I would have as an “Enemy of the State.”

Here are the lists of words they will look for. I would bet they came from NSA, so you know what they are looking for when they scan your emails.

Hat tip to DoctoRx.