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DHS Monitors Social Media For 'Political Dissent'
OverTheGeicoE writes "Recently, TSA's 'Blogger Bob' Burns posted a rant against a cupcake on the TSA blog. Perhaps it made you wonder if TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, really understand what we're saying about them, especially online. Well, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, we now know a lot more about how they monitor online comments aside from 'Blogger Bob.' EPIC has received hundreds of pages of documents regarding DHS's online surveillance program. These documents reveal that DHS has contracts with General Dynamics for '24/7 media and social network monitoring.' Perhaps it will warm your heart to know that DHS is particularly interested in tracking media stories that 'reflect adversely' on the U.S. government generally and DHS specifically. The documents include a report summary that might be representative of General Dynamics' work. The example includes summaries of comments on blogs and social networking sites, including quotes. Then again, you might remember J. Edgar Hoover's monitoring of antiwar activists during the Vietnam War, which certainly wasn't for the protesters' benefit."
From the government that brought us flag@whitehouse.gov. "Homeland security" is a tool used by a media-obsessed administration to justify its ever-increasing intrusiveness. This kind of robotic behavior in which common sense isn't allowed to override unreasonable strictness isn't making us safer, but it is making us miserable. Terrorist attacks have the word "terror" in them for a reason. The killing of innocent victims is just a vehicle for the ultimate goal of instilling paranoia and apprehension to influence behavior, and now we're fretting over jarred cupcakes. Mission accomplished.
This is a quote from a friend's mother, shortly after 9/11, in response to the absurd increase in airport security procedures. As long as people are willing to trade freedom for security, DHS and its ilk will prosper.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
DHS = STASI. And this is just the beginning. When it comes to the US government you can never be too paranoid. Yet another reason not to use facebook. But it's not just facebook I bet. Forums like this or any forums critical of the TSA are obviously being monitored for dissent. For 'domestic extremists', which really means anyone who would advocates abolishing the TSA or DHS.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world isn't out to get you."
I think Slashdot has become self aware.
The Gestapo (; abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police) was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police (Chef der Deutschen Polizei). From September 1939 forward it was administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) ("Reich Main Security Office") and was considered a sister organization of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ("Security Service") and also a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo) ("security police").
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Link to some more sources people
http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0035.htm
http://www.dhs.gov/files/publications/gc_1281732303362.shtm#3
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
this is why free speech can sometimes necessitate anonymous speech. Tt seems that the people in charge of the government are fearing revolution by the people more each and every day to me.
...so they can truly grasp the disdain they have earned.
SOPA? Really?
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
Here's some dissent for you: Fuck You. Fuck you and everything related to this systematic destruction of civil liberties in the US.
I'd expect them to read postings and keep an eye out for people threatening violence. That's a good thing. If someone stands up in a town square and yells that they're going to go shoot the mayor, I'd expect cops to take note. Where it becomes bad is if they harass or in any way mistreat people who aren't threatening violence. Is there any evidence that they're doing that?
That must have passed me by.
I can see why they'd show their reasoning behind it, so I can't really say they're "ranting" about it. Imagine if the TSA had to "rant" about every single one of their decisions they made? Wouldn't that be the transparency behind their decisions that we're hoping for?
The tone of the cupcake blog post seems a bit harsh, but the information conveyed and the link to past events which helped support such thinking is one I wish would come up in every single complaint we have against the TSA. By calling it "ranting", all you're doing is making it so they're even less likely to try to explain themselves after they take a questionable action.
Vote Ron Paul 2012
Liberty.
You're so right!
-The Choir
For the exception the occasional "law and order" conservative, very few of us here will disagree with you. Here's the thing, I know many people who think the government is really out to protect us. They really think that this monitoring of us is necessary and that if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about - really, I'm paraphrasing a programmer I used to work with and she's actually quite talented, too.
This security theater appeals to many people's emotional need to feel safe and there's no reasoning with them. I would be surprised if intelligence has anything to do with it because I've this fear pervade all levels of society. And as a democracy, excuse me, a republic, we are doomed to live under the tyranny of the scared huddled masses who feed off of the fear that is fed them by an irresponsible, profit hungry, corrupt media.
History is loaded with examples of people using people's fear to override their reason and their intellect. It has worked since the beginning of history and it saddens me that it will be true until the day we are extinct.
... who honestly could not have seen this coming?
Check your premises.
I think they're missing the mark here. Just because social networks are juicy, low-hanging fruit doesn't mean they're going to find terrorists using them. Aren't most terrorists characterized by their anti-social behavior? People who have lots of social connections are less likely to have a desire to carry out a terrorist attack than someone who is isolated, anti-social and bitter. They're not going to find a terrorist plot posted on someone's wall with a time stamp and a description of the atrocities the person is mulling over. They ought to be looking at sites frequented by anti-social people who are isolated and bitter, like Sl... On second thought, Facebook sounds like a great resource to monitor!
DHS was going to monitor Islamic sites, but they couldn't figure out all the squigglies. Since the equipment was already bought, and the contract to their buddies were already handed out, they figured, fuck it, we'll us it to monitor Americans. At least we can understand the language.
If the government does it, it's legal "conscription."
Technically, conscription is a crime. There's no authority in the constitution to force people into the military. The fifth amendment prohibits depriving anyone of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and the thirteenth amendment abolishes involuntary servitude except for anyone who's been convicted of a crime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I have had it with these motherfucking cakes on this motherfucking plane!
In all fairness to DHS and its potential intentions, there isn't necessarily anything nefarious about the mere act of monitoring social media. What if the intent of the monitoring is introspective, actively seeking out criticisms of their performance with the intention of improving it?
I'm not saying the intent actually is that noble, but it could be, lacking damning proof to the contrary.
Why is Snark Required?
Ten years ago, 19 hijackers armed only with box-cutters, took over 4 commercial aircraft and 3 of 4 of them into USA militarily & economically sensitive sites while eluding the entire NORAD defense organization, causing nearly 3 thousand deaths. At least, that is the official conspiracy theory, that through a series of extraordinary coincidences in near-perfect alignment, 9/11/2001 "just happened", "and that no one had any idea that such an event was even possible."
Ignored, discounted, and not investigated were such factors as (1) the USA 'Visa Express' program based in Saudi Arabia was used to bring Islamist fighters to the USA for military training for many years and, (2) the fact that at least 8 of 19 hijackers were still alive in the ME and merely victims of identity theft, (3) that 3 office towers built from concrete, steel, & glass fell symmetrically within their own footprints at very nearly the acceleration of gravity in a vacuum, and (4) that senior Bush regime officials were collaborators & signatories to the PNAC document which called for global military hegemony subsequent to a "new Pearl Harbor".
I don't mean to sound callus about the loss of those 3,000 people on 9/11/2001, but 200,000+ people per year die from tobacco-related illnesses, and 20,000+ people per year die from alcohol-related traffic accidents. We Americans have surrendered our birthright Constitution & Bill of Rights, and have waged "preemptive wars" for the past 10 years in 6+ countries, costing over $1.2 Trillion and over 5,000 servicemen killed & 100,000+ GIs seriously wounded. In all that 10 year period, no additional domestic terrorist attacks by foreign islamic terrorists have ever been consummated, and each serious attack attempted have been thwarted by alert civilians, not the USA police state.
How has this vast expenditure of blood & treasure, of the loss of individual freedoms, liberties, and inalienable rights, been worth the minimal risk of new domestic terrorist attacks? I don't see the value ...
Yup Bush was an idiot. Yup Obama is keeping the same pro-wall street, spend happy policies of Bush. There is not much difference between the spending habits of rank and file Dems and Reps, except for a few drastic differences like Ron Paul. The two parties may want to spend on different things, but they really don't want to cut.
While the Tea Party did start last election cycle with Paul, it's been hijacked by various people trying to lead a grassroots headless organization. Some are bad and get attention in the worse ways. No different than the various occupy movements not having a specific leader.
But the core belief of a small gov that follows the constitution is valid. Yes Bush was a complete and utter idiot sockpuppet. How he was elected twice baffles me. But Obama really blew his hope and change. Senator O was against warrantless wiretaps, was against the Feds being involved with state legal rights for medical marihuana, was going to close Gitmo, was against the war in Iraq, was going to close redundancies in the government. 4 years later he's broken all of those promises. Yes we're out of Iraq, but it was at Bush's timetable and not any sooner. Oh and the money trail hasn't changed, Obama is still in bed with the same big business/big bank people Bush was. Obama's DOJ has even given up on prosecuting anyone responsible for the wall street disasters. Hell even his Obama care was all pro-big business. If it was a mandated government program that's one thing, mandating private companies for health care, and then limiting new hospitals for competition is obvious lobbying by the existing health care insurance system.
So if you're happy with Obama being basically a 3rd term of Bush and want one more, then vote Dem or any of the other Rep candidates. Want a chance for something different, go with Ron Paul
The cases for making nuclear reactors more safe are from more ancient history and from other parts of the world as well.
And single the only nukes ever fell on Japan by US bombers clearly the US is safe from nuclear attack?
Congrats on a near perfect example of thinking the US is not part of the rest of the world. Hope your magic border stops things that happened elsewhere from happening within your country.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Like many a carebear you do not get what racism really is.
"95% of black males in Washington are criminal" is NOT a racist statement IF it is true. If it is true, then it is simply an observation of fact.
"95% of black makes are criminal" has a small chance of not being racist but since it is highly unlikely the 95% of mid/south Africa males are criminal, it most likely is racist.
Racism: Blacks can't see well at night and are therefor not suited to be soldiers.
Medical diagnosis: This black person suffers from night blindness.
The first btw was a real racist piece of dogma that was used to keep blacks out of the American army pre-WW2.
It is extremely dangerous for people trying not to be racist to fall over into the overly politically correct and start to deny facts. The high crime rates among blacks MIGHT be racial OR they might be cultural OR they might be economic, but you can't deal with them unless you are able to acknowledge the numbers exist.
Japanese can't hold their liquor. Racist? No, it is a medical fact, the japanese have a lesser capability to digest alcohol, making them drunk sooner even if accounting for possible differences in body mass. So... if implenting safe alcohol levels, do you go politically correct OR be a racist?
Well, we ARE sexist. When stating save drinking levels, men are told they can drink more glasses then females. Should we advise Asian women to drink even less to be under the limit? Why not?
I am not defending Ron Paul. Far from it, I agree with your assesment. BUT to properly fight racists you got to fight them with the absolute truth not with how you would want the world to look.
Don't deny that in areas where the poor are mostly black, most of the blacks are also poor. Show that in areas where the poor are mostly white or another race, the crime statistics reflect this as well. Don't descend to the bigots level by manipulating figures.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What I find so deliciously ironic about the Obama administration is that it manages to combine the worst policies of both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
DHS? TSA? Please, write out these acronyms. Not all /. readers live in the USA or have Wikipedia plugged into their brains.
...Is another man's "domestic terrorism", or "hate speech".. or several other labels that lets the government take it down, and detain the writer/contributors ( and soon.. mere readers of such forbidden fruit )
All for your protection.. save the children.. !
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about some real security? Security from unemployment, from medical bankruptcy, from foreclosure.
We could have spent a third of that 1.6 Trillion to give us security from crumbling infrastructure (and make a good dent in unemployment). Security from insurance of all kinds reneging on the deal as soon as a claim is filed would be good.
How about some financial security for middle class households? Why doesn't the 'family values' party value the family enough to make sure the parents have time to be with their kids and that it's not spent worrying about the mortgage?
Shadowy government agent #1: "We need more oil. Let's invade Iraq."
Shadowy government agent #2: "We need an excuse first."
Agent #1: "OK - let's rig the Twin Towers with explosives, making sure none of the thousands of people who work there sees us doing it. Then let's brainwash some Saudis to hijack two planes and fly them into the towers. Then we'll set off the charges and collapse the buildings."
Agent #2: "Why bother with making sure the buildings collapse? Plenty of people will die when they fly planes into them. That should get the world on our side."
Agent #1 "Because there won't be enough people in on the conspiracy with just a simple kamikaze attack. We want to have hundreds of contractors, suppliers, demolition experts, security guards, fire department personnel, building supervisors, etc, etc to bribe to keep quiet for at least ten years."
Agent #2: "Um, OK. Shall we attack another building too?"
Agent #1: "Yes. Let's fire a cruise missile at the Pentagon during morning rush hour."
Agent #2: "Not in the middle of the night when no one would see it?"
Agent #1: "No."
Agent #2: "But there'll be lots of witnesses."
Agent #1: "Don't worry. We'll pay them all to say it was a Boeing 757. And we'll knock down some lampposts on the highway overpass too, because I've just realised a cruise missile doesn't have the same wingspan as a 757. Oh, and we'll confiscate some CCTV footage to make people think we're hiding something."
Agent #2: "But don't we always confiscate CCTV footage when we're investigating something?"
Agent #1: "Yes. But this time, for some reason, it'll be suspicious."
Agent #2: “But if we fire a cruise missile, that would leave a 757 unaccounted for.”
Agent #1: “No problem. We’ll just hijack one ourselves and fly it somewhere like Andrews Air Force Base or Area 51 or somewhere like that, dismantle it, kill all the passengers, burn the luggage and then transport all the wreckage to the Pentagon to scatter around as evidence.”
Agent #2: “I see.”
Agent #1: “Also, because the towers have a lightweight steel tube framework to allow them to sway in the wind, and the Pentagon is made of reinforced concrete, a lot of LiveLeak users will be confused by the different impact shapes. So they’ll be happy to believe in the cruise missile.”
Agent #2: “Um.”
Agent #1: “What’s up?”
Agent #2: “Why don’t we just, er, actually fly another plane into the Pentagon? I mean, by that stage people will already have seen two jumbo jets fly into the Twin Towers, so I don’t see the problem with using a third.”
Agent #1: “For Christ’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you? We want things as complicated as possible so clever people on the internet can spot the holes in our plans.”
Agent #2: “Ah, right.. Sorry. OK, I’ll go get the brainwashing machine and kidnap some Saudis, then we’re good to go.
You make some interesting points, and it is true the government at all levels can indeed do various bad things for all sorts of reasons, but the problem is that coordination of some sort is so darn useful. For example, what are you going to do when someone pollutes your groundwater? Call the EPA? Who is going to prevent endless feuding between your neighbors with guns? The Justice Department? (At least, in places that still have a reasonable level of economic order.) Who is going to maintain the roads? Who is going to support really basic long-term research (under our current economic paradigm without a basic income)? Who is going to redistribute wealth to account for the fact that "the rich get richer"? Who is going to make sure that markets take in account externalities like pollution, local risks, and systemic risk?
Yes, in theory one can come up with less formal social organizations to do these things. But there is still some organization. And probably one then has voting or key decision makers with permissions, or people who defer to other people for various reasons and so on. Perhaps the best sci-fi story about such an alternative is James P. Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear, but even he admits that the story took it too far from what probably could be made to work in practice (but it's still an inspirational story you'd probably like).
So, one way or another, you end up with something like a "government" when you try to build a real society. Different forms of government may work better or worse for different cultures, times, situations, or personalities, but we still need some form of organization and agreement.
Something on the theory:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation."
Something on the practice:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
"The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. "
And health and community are important to happiness (but a US conservative typically might not want to admit that...)
The fact that some parts of governments in the USA may be doing a bad job, and may be captured by the interests they are supposed to regulate, does not mean all government is bad. Several European governments (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden) are doing better in many respects. We may need a more general paradigm shift in our socioeconomics though before our government can start working well again. But in general, the most thriving societies have both good government and a dynamic business exchange sector.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.