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What The DHS Is Looking For In Your Posts
New submitter lister king of smeg writes "As we all know The Department of Homeland Security monitors social networks,in an attempt to expose 'Items Of Interest.' As it turns out many terms including seemingly benign words such as flu, agent, response, cops drill, etc are on the list of words that set off warning bells for the government spooks. Many of the terms make sense ..., but there are some real stupid ones on the list to like 'social network' ... [according to a] list of key words provided to a DHS contractor that were released by EPIC."
Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Tsunami, Earthquake, Tremor, Flood
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
I guess at least we should be happy that "Dissent", "Protest", "Occupy", "Tea party", and "Third Party" aren't on there...well, not yet anyway.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The word "troll" is not yet a "terr'rist term".
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
...how long until someone writes a mail-editing packet filter and sets it up in a few really large hub nodes? :)
Ezekiel 23:20
Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Tsunami, Earthquake, Tremor, Flood
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
Well, Homeland security also encompasses the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so they do have some real interest in getting the news fast if there is a natural disaster going on. It turns out that the twitter feeds actually do spread news of natural disasters faster than watching CNN.
(...and, for that matter, if Lex Luthor is up to tricks, shouldn't they want to catch him?)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Oh man what a travesty the US has become.
If I open a page on facebook to talk about the Butlerian Jihad or make a page for fans of the BJ are the black men going to kidnap and water torture me in an attempt to find out the terrorist cell I belong to ? Lol, lol, lol.
Of the 4 examples in this post, "flu", "agent", and "cops drill" aren't inappropriate things to monitor (if it's appropriate to monitor at all, which is another story). "Flu" tracking is important for epidemics. Discussions of the location of cops and agents seems to make sense too. Again, I think it's silly they're trying to monitor social networks to this level, but if they're going to do it those aren't the worst keywords.
Also, I guess now I'm going to be tracked for discussing the keywords. How very meta.
Developers: We can use your help.
I don't see anything that would flag for a white Christian "America First" group that meets during their prayer group and who would want string able bodied men for their Godly conversion of America and who would preserve an unborn human life at all costs.
Yes, I alluding to white supremacists and radical pro-life groups that resort to bombings and doctor assassinations.
So, if I were an Islamist terrorist, I would pose as a Christian white supremacy group and get away with it?
And I found a cool way to get a free gps receiver!
Just post the following words on your blog:
allah akbar, jihad!, white, house, flu, anthrax, bomb, airplane!, pope, my brothers!, 70 virgins, hail mary
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
They are trying to catch you, the citizen, organizing to reform the financial elites that have ruined our economy and control our/their politicians.
i have noticed the government gotten more & more drunk and insane with their control & power, and it is steadily getting worse, my only question is how tyrannical will they get before the citizens of this nation wake up and turn on them...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"but there are some real stupid ones on the list to like 'social network'" - that's either does not parse into English or the submitter is really so fucking stupid he doesn't know the difference between "to" and "too". I'm voting for the latter.
... Tornado, Twister, Tsunami, ...
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
They're looking for the coed naked twister parties. I haven't seen a t-shirt or hat with that phrase in probably 20 years...
Seriously though I hope they whitelist weather.gov or else a lot of mostly harmless meteorologists will pay the ultimate price in america's war on civil liberties err I mean terror.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Or maybe a Facebook worm that randomly injects these words in innocent posts?
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
They would need Clark Kents alter ego to catch Lex Luthor...
s/411/419
Brainfarted.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
I know why they are terrorist looking for those bomb seemingly nuclear innocuous words!
I think jihad maybe someone is just really sensitive to social network sites creating terror plots nerve agent. I know sometimes I plume overreact when I see something Center for Disease Control (CDC) that I don't really understand swine, and maybe we should give them a little slack Abu Sayyaf.
It reads :
A list of words that set off warning bells for the government spooks.
Funny choice of words ?
What about government officials who are not spooks ?
Terrorism Al Queda Terror Attack Iraq Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Agro Environmental terrorist Eco terrorism Conventional weapon Target Weapons grade Dirty bomb Enriched Nuclear Chemical weapon Biological weapon Ammonium nitrate Improvised explosive device IED (Improvised Explosive Device) Abu Sayyaf Hamas FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia) IRA (Irish Republican Army) ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) Basque Separatists Hezbollah Tamil Tiger PLF (Palestine Liberation Front) PLO (Palestine Libration Organization) Car bomb Jihad Taliban Weapons cache Suicide bomber Suicide attack Suspicious substance AQAP (Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) Yemen Pirates Extremism Somalia Nigeria Radicals Al-Shabaab Home grown Plot Nationalist Recruitment Fundamentalism Islamist
They're not looking for any one of these words. They're cross-indexing usage of multiple words. If a terrorist event is about to happen and they think it's near a bridge, finding "bridge" and "social network" and "ammonium nitrate" might be a good way to identify friends of the perp...
I predict a large percentage of false positives as word of this list spreads across the social networks.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Goodie! New words to make sure I post all the time!
I am going to blow up NYC by using terror, social networking, and flu. Agent orange is my favorite mixed drink.
RADIOACTIVE AGRO TERROR!!!!!!!!!twelve131313
Better yet, I had to get my kids inoculated with TAMIFLU and now can't afford to contribute to this year's IRA. I went to the TARGET last night in SAN DIEGO and had a conversation with a SMART cashier. She told me that she was an AGRICULTURE major before moving from EL PASO but decided that GAS was too expensive for that.
WOOT!
Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Tsunami, Earthquake, Tremor, Flood
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
They're looking for music pirates! Its a RIAA front! Beware!
Rock you like a Huricaaaaane... (a little over played, but good)
Pantera_Floods.mp3 (pretty good)
"Texas Tornado" by Bobby Braddock (note I spec'd music pirates, not "good music" pirates)
Earthquake by lil wayne (see above note x10)
I need some help w/ the rest...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Exploser?
So, I guess we're now open to submissions/nominations for the "most innocuous post to contain all of the DHS Red Flag words" contest, right? Aside from a one-way trip to Gitmo, what can our contestants look forward to winning?
The word "troll" is not yet a "terr'rist term".
No but "Airplane (and derivatives)" are which puts many on Slashdot in danger. Apparently integrals are fine though. Interestingly us brits also apparently get away with our aeroplanes which is undoubtedly where "airplane" was itself derived from.
I remember when I first stared using email and newsgroups there were several email signatures -- I think they were automatically and randomly generated, with a bunch of terrorist-style keywords and phrases followed by the words "Greetings to my friends at the NSA".
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/723/
Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Tsunami, Earthquake, Tremor, Flood
Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?
Considering that any person considering illegal action that has had at least a modicum of training (which is fairly easily found by simple going to the right websites/forums) would never use terms such as these openly in social networks, I doubt that would ever even happen. One of the first things they would learn would be operational security, ie code-words and code phrases. I highly doubt DHS seriously expects that this will help them identify anyone. More than likely they see it as a way to track general trends, which would explain the inclusion of weather terms. As a poster below me mentioned, FEMA comes under the purview of DHS, so coupling search terms like this with location data can give data on path, damage levels, infection rates/patterns (in the case of "flu"). This is far more than a simple Big Brother-esque surveillance program as the summary is trying to lead people to believe. It has plenty of scientific, beneficial uses as well.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Well, Homeland security also encompasses the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so they do have some real interest in getting the news fast if there is a natural disaster going on.
In that case, they should also watch for "aliens", "alien-human hybrids", "black oil", and "colonization".
Ezekiel 23:20
Neither. Who the fuck are you kidding, other than yourself? What terrorist would talk in plain text on social networks about serious stuff? I'd be surprised if they're even into mail and cell phones a whole lot. I mean, the ones that actually end up doing stuff -- surely not the American population, which might after all wake up to how badly it's being shafted, and which is the main target of this. The only threat the terrorists face is the tax payers saying "nah, let's pay for something else, schools maybe". So they come up with stuff like this. And hey, it's not like you have any way of knowing what they're actually searching for, that won't be declassified for 50 years, if ever. This is just something to tell people "they're watching", and the more shallow the discussion about it is, the better.
Off topic I know, but in fact there is more evidence for the existence of Superman. His existence is documented in a variety of media. The descriptions are almost entirely consistent with one another. There is the same amount of physical evidence of his miracles (i.e. zilch). In both cases the suspension of the laws of physics and chemistry have to be postulated to believe the writings. If I were an Abrahamic religious fundamentalist, I would be trying to destroy all the evidence for Superman, because while it exists it is too easy to produce a counter-argument to the principle of evidence from sacred books.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
btw, "social network" is not on the list, as reported by the abstract. It's "social media".
Al Queda (all spellings)
What would be the regular expression for that?
Terrorists will doubtless now attack tunnels using sociophobes planting explosives based on potassium chlorate.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I think we should find out all the words that they're monitoring, and organize a movement to have everyone slip them all into their facebook/twitter posts.
Hey everyone! I just dropped a dirty bomb in the toilet. So stinky!
or
I'm going to really attack the gym today, do some exercise drills. It'll be an explosion of activity!
or
Molly, I really loved seeing you tonight. Happy Birthday! Chemical weapons.
Isn't it interesting that we now can take for granted that the government is spying on us? When I was a boy, one of the great things about this country, and one of the things that distinguished us from other countries, was that we didn't have to worry about that. In fact we took it for granted that the government wasn't watching what we did and listening to what we said.
Then some people flew some planes into some buildings and we all lost our collective shit. It seems everyone, from the media to politicians to businesses to defense contractors and intelligence agencies, has an interest in keeping the American people cowered in fear. And cower we do! We would never have put up with the wars and the invasions of our rights and privacy 12 years ago. But once people have the shit scared out of them, they will accept a lot of stuff they wouldn't have before. There are people know and count on this.
People, 9/11 was a one-off event. It was horrifying and disturbing, but it isn't going to happen again. In the meantime, there have been no significant terrorist attacks in this country. Sure, we've had the shoe-bomber and then the underwear-bomber (both of whom evaded security). But are those guys worth all this? There is no terrorist threat! Yes, there are those few who think violence will get them what they want, but that has always been true. There is no threat that warrants this overreaction, and shifting of the fundamental character of this country.
But now everyone is afraid, and are kept that way by the entities mentioned above, who see self-interest in our fear. They are not interested in actually protecting you (as if you needed to be protected), they are lining their pockets and building power structures. It's a shame, because it seems that at the end of the day, "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is just a line in a song.
There you go DHS (or NSA, or FBI, or CIA, or NRO), put me on your list.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
THIS. Modded the fuck up. I advise others to do the same.
Call me a conspiracy nut, but I wouldn't think that the DHS would let their wordlist get released if all they were doing was matching texts on specific terms. That is no better than a really dumb bayesian spam filter and would easily be defeated with childishly simple methods. When it comes to content filtering and semantic extraction, the science has moved way beyond such simple methods. Actually it is a very interesting research topic and I would love to have a job working with developing such models for the DHS if it wasn't for such an immoral purpose.
Likely other signals they use to extract information is the dates and times when messages are sent and from which ip addresses. Also how well written they are and what kinds of spelling and grammatical errors. Native speakers of semitic languages such as Arabic make different kinds of spelling errors than Germanic language speakers. That's just from the top of my head. My point is that government surveillance organisations aren't as dumb as the article seem to suggest.
Football Odds
Tremor and Twister could be a partnership with the MPAA.
What's the challenge, you ask? Write a completely innocuous story using as many of the words as possible, like this:
"So I recall driving home down the interstate with a box full of Kahlua Mudslide in the trunk, but there was so much sleet that that I started sliding around a bit. But I wanted to get home so I could work on recruitment for my startup company, so I kept driving right through the blizzard. I'd grown up in cold weather, but I didn't expect a large brown animal to burst from the forest border right onto the road! Although I tried to slam on my brakes, I hit the moose and slid right into a ditch. Thanks to the erosion, my car lodged on a rock rather than falling down into the river, but even so I decided an evacuation was in order. I stepped outside, and realized if I wasn't careful I might die of exposure. So I struggled up off the side of the ditch, hoping to find some aid, and sat huddled on the side of the road, with my cell phone out of power, checking my watch to see how much longer I might have to live, when a road work gang showed up and stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief, and got into their truck, ignoring any bacteria or cold virus I might pick up in the process. The whole thing seemed almost like a plot to a soap opera or something."
(Really, NSA, I don't wish any kind of harm to the United States, I'm just proving a point)
I am officially gone from
Last night I had an incident with the critical infrastructure of my home perimeter's secure kitchen, involving powder ( white ). As outside the sleet fell on and on, it evolved into a body-liquid shootout between me and my partner. We had lots of fun.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And I'll say it again: 9/11 was the best thing that could have ever happened to the business of government.
Notice that I quite deliberately said "business".
long live the EMACS meta-x spook command ... :-)
Not getting spied upon is as easy as speaking another language.
much like your posting
It has plenty of scientific, beneficial uses as well.
Most things do, but that doesn't mean its used that way and if you trust the Federal Government to not expand its use, then you are living in a dream world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have systems designed to monitor weather, flooding, seismic activity, volcanism and so on? If they're finding out about natural disasters from social networks, that's beyond pathetic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Throw the words from the DHS list in with the usual spammer's algorithm to generate nonsense text.
The end result could look like it was written by a cross between Sarah Palin and Osama Bin Laden.
What terrorist would talk in plain text on social networks about serious stuff?
The kind the DHS wants us to believe actually exist.
We've had M-x spook in emacs for _years_. Let's all praise the paranoia and fore sight of RMS.
It's a relief that this plot for power is getting enough exposure to burst. With all the problems with drugs, narcotics, cocaine, marijuana, (watch for that brown mudslide though, it's probably contaminated and full of virus' and bacteria), I'm warning everyone now that soon we will all be run by nationalist radicals. Let's just start recruitment from Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen, Mexico (Is that south of the border? I can't recall). Compared to lightening and blizzards, these gangs and cartels are spreading across our interstate like erosion on mud. We could just try to evacuate part of our society, but we would all probably just become animals probably just join Al-Shabaab. I doubt that would bring any closure, though, we would be lost in the dark without aid. You could possibly call it a return to fundamentalism. Watch me become a pirate. I want to be a pirate. *James Bond alarm sound*
So what we do is get a list of these words and turn them into lorem ipsum words and post these things all the time on all accounts, even random accounts. hahahhahahhahahaha
I thought on first glance it was:
What the DHS is looking for in your pants
To be honest, it's a question that many more people want answering.
I agree. This list is probably opsec from DHS side. Disinformation. If it was me, I would have technically a 'keyword list' matching system specifically for release in FOIA situations like this. The actual searching/identification/tagging is algorithmic and context based and has very little to do with this list.
Thanks for the obvious post but that is completely irrelevant to the parent you responded to...
There's major interest in using social networks for real-time detection and monitoring of natural disasters. It's cheap, has good coverage, and is faster than the news.
Oh, Dirty Bomb!
All Fusion Centers Burn warm, dead Spillovers.
Infections travel!
Where is the cold Nuclear threat?
Agents wave like rough Coast Guards.
United Nations Explosion!
Death is a warm Department of Homeland Security.
Sail calmly like a misty U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Where is the big Nuclear?
The rainy United Nations roughly fights the Nerve agent.
The Gas Exposures like a warm White Powder.
Wow, Exercise!
Why does the Radiation rise?
The warm Transportation Security Administration swiftly Lockdown the Fusion Center.
Looks like I'm not getting shit done today... :)
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It reads :
A list of words that set off warning bells for the government spooks.
Funny choice of words ? What about government officials who are not spooks ?
Not since they enforced the quota system.
Monitoring traffic can sure have beneficial use. It does not say anything about the act itself being legal. I could be speeding on the highway notice a fire and tell it to authorities. Speeding is still illegal and not very safe. Once the end starts justifying the means, kiss your Constitution goodbye.
But, we are not even discussing what DHS is looking for.
We are discussing what DHS is saying is looking for. In other words, the message is: "be careful, put even remotely suspicious things online and you get yourself into some black list, with all the associated problems"
Considering what you rightfully said, and considering that inflating the list of suspects is detrimental to the apparent aim of catching real criminals, I'd conclude that this is an act of propaganda.
To get into Godwin's territory, monitoring for dissent is basically harmless, but so is a yellow (pink, red...) star sewed on clothes.
One of the most confounding thing for an American (or an Indian American) trying to solve the cryptic crossword puzzles from the British newspapers is getting the rhyming slang based clues right. A subculture that does not want to be monitored would develop its own code words and pretty soon the brutal grep for keywords in the stream of messages would prove to be useless. It did not help Bobbies putting on tattered clothing and hanging around the seedy bars trying eavesdrop on the dips and their squeezes. It is not going to help the Govt snoopers for long either.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Texas Flood" by SRV
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Has it been explained how they just "monitor" social networking? I thought crawling the sites was against the TOS for us proles. This leaves me with some questions I haven't seen answered anywhere yet:
1) Does that mean the sites are collaborating with the government to give them an info feed?
2) Do they get access to "private" communications?
3) Are these sites legally required to collaborate like this? Seems unlikely/unconstitutional but who knows anymore.
I want to know how much blame to direct at facebook vs the government.
or Texas Flood by SRV! :0
I heard you like to hear about social networks, so I talked about social networks on your social network so you can eavesdrop while you eavesdrop.
Lex Luthor's defenses are all kryptonite and red sun lamps. You don't send in Superman, you send in Batman or Wonder Woman.
No system is 100% accurate, so it's best to have redundancy and correlate multiple sensors. Also, it takes time to process data from them, and then more time to send information to interested parties. Twitter or other sources (say, the amount of 911 calls being made in an area) could be used to prioritize an area for more detailed scrutiny.
Besides, disaster recognition systems cost money, so you can't just blanket every square meter with sensors - you have to decide what disasters are likely to hit where. But even low-probability disasters can hit, and monitoring Twitter is a cheap way of getting basic coverage for everything everywhere, so why not do it?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Easy: "crash" is in the list and the discussion about Azure's downtime will quickly spring to the attention of DHS. As well as any recipe about "pork" or facebook posts of people playing with their children in the "snow".
I would just like to say Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Coast Guard (USCG) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol Secret Service (USSS) National Operations Center (NOC) Homeland Defense Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Task Force Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Fusion Center Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Air Marshal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Guard Red Cross United Nations (UN) Assassination Attack Domestic security Drill Exercise Cops Law enforcement Authorities Disaster assistance Disaster management DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office) National preparedness Mitigation Prevention Response Recovery Dirty Bomb Domestic nuclear detection Emergency management Emergency response First responder Homeland security Maritime domain awareness (MDA) National preparedness initiative Militia Shooting Shots fired Evacuation Deaths Hostage Explosion (explosive) Police Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) Organized crime Gangs National security State of emergency Security Breach Threat Standoff SWAT Screening Lockdown Bomb (squad or threat) Crash Looting Riot Emergency Landing Pipe bomb Incident Facility Hazmat Nuclear Chemical Spill Suspicious package/device Toxic National laboratory Nuclear facility Nuclear threat Cloud Plume Radiation Radioactive Leak Biological infection (or event) Chemical Chemical burn Biological Epidemic Hazardous Hazardous material incident Industrial spill Infection Powder (white) Gas Spillover Anthrax Blister agent Exposure Burn Nerve agent Ricin Sarin North Korea Outbreak Contamination Exposure Virus Evacuation Bacteria Recall Ebola Food Poisoning Foot and Mouth (FMD) H5N1 Avian Flu Salmonella Small Pox Plague Human to human Human to ANIMAL Influenza Center for Disease Control (CDC) Drug Administration (FDA) Public Health Toxic Agro Terror Tuberculosis (TB) Agriculture Listeria Symptoms Mutation Resistant Antiviral Wave Pandemic Infection Water/air borne Sick Swine Pork Strain Quarantine H1N1 Vaccine Tamiflu Norvo Virus Epidemic World Health Organization (WHO and components) Viral Hemorrhagic Fever E. Coli Infrastructure security Airport CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources) AMTRAK Collapse Computer infrastructure Communications infrastructure Telecommunications Critical infrastructure National infrastructure Metro WMATA Airplane (and derivatives) Chemical fire Subway BART MARTA Port Authority NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center) Transportation security Grid Power Smart Body scanner Electric Failure or outage Black out Brown out Port Dock Bridge Canceled Delays Service disruption Power lines Drug cartel Violence Gang Drug Narcotics Cocaine Marijuana Heroin Border Mexico Cartel Southwest Juarez Sinaloa Tijuana Torreon Yuma Tucson Decapitated U.S. Consulate Consular El Paso Fort Hancock San Diego Ciudad Juarez Nogales Sonora Colombia Mara salvatrucha MS13 or MS-13 Drug war M
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
I suggest that it would be extraordinairly fun to ranomly tweet gibberish (e.g. 2k34k34$$8djks-03-28378dk #DidYouDoThis?) on twitter and enjoy the fact that the best crypto people in the employ of 3 letter agencies will be frustrated trying to figure it out.
Seriously... the best way to confound such a keyword system is to make analysis meaningless.
load "$",8,1
and don't forget the MPAA!
Tremors!
Earthquake 2012
Super Mega Ultra Class 10 Tornadicane from the Future
Or Systems like these are extremely easy to break?
Just overloading social networks with these words using dummy accounts (a small server farm should be enough) would render this approach useless, and at the same time act as misdirection before someone attacked?
I knew the USA government uses social networks to look for possible threats, but the system might turn against them.
The Department of "Homeland Security"....that name always reminds me of the Nightwatch from Babylon 5. I still cringe when people refer to the U.S. as "Homeland" or "Motherland".
but there are some real [sic] stupid ones on the list to [sic] like 'social network'
Is your lack of grammar and poor spelling an attempt to avoid said monitoring?
Page 37: After clicking on next, the following screen will appear and you must select “Accept for all sessions”
SSL Warning! The server has sent you an invalid certificate.
Yes my friends, it seems the dept of homeland security's emergency management portal login does not have a valid SSL certificate, and the solution is to not check. What could possibly go wrong?
"We're gonna get those terrorists."
-Peter Griffin
Yes and no. With today's population all having handheld devices that can twitter, facebook, etc. it's often the case that the local population to an event gets the message out often substantially before the official channels do. Take for example tornadoes - while the NWS may have radar that shows where a tornado might be occurring, and people calling 911 might set off official responses to a tornado, someone who's sitting in their house tweeting that the house next door just flew away in a twister is more immediate and more eyewitness - which is what DHS is looking for - they want to know if something is going on before the official channels can process it. After RTFA and the document related, it appears they have a "trust order relationship" - first off - major news media (CNN, etc.) - second is "local media" - third is things like well known websites and news aggregate sites, fourth is blogs and social media, etc... things that are 3rd and 4th level need "confirmation" from a first level source before it becomes official. This just sets off the warning bells that something might be happening and everyone needs to pay more attention that something could be up.... makes sense if you ask me.
but we are in the US, so we have square feet instead of square meters... which means it takes 9 times as many sensors!
The word "lightening" is on the list. They must have to wade through a shit-ton of motorsports forum posts before they get their day started. This is under the "weather" section BTW, while "lightning" is not.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That reads like a Zippy the Pinhead quote.
I wonder if someone could reconfigure the Zippy quote generator to optimize it for hitting the watch list.
Not that I would do or condone doing such a horrible timewasting thing to our worthy DHS agents. ;)
They are, now.
Yeah and I can think of only two words scarier - President Palin.
It would be nice if it were as you say. It could also be a mix of naive wishful thinking and gross incompetence.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
... it's pretty obvious that this was assembled not by some bayesian learning system, but by hand.
Of course, since they probably have a dozen or so actual terrorist electronic communications at most, it makes it rather hard to actually put together a model that holds water.
More wasteful security theater and intrusion into our lives.
PS: Blizzard? Really? So - they're protecting us from the horde?
Check your premises.
At least they've got Blizzard. We are safe from a capital city raid, at least.
Check your premises.
flu, agent, response, cops drill ! I believe it was Benjamin Franklin that once said something like "When you sacrifice freedom for security you will have neither". Man, our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have systems designed to monitor weather, flooding, seismic activity, volcanism and so on? If they're finding out about natural disasters from social networks, that's beyond pathetic.
True, but sensors can't tell you what impact a tornado is causing; for that, you need "ground truth" information. The National Weather Service still has a network of weather spotters to complement the information given by the sensors, and took storm reports over Twitter a couple of years ago to further augment that info (not sure if they are still doing that, though).
Jihad detonator kidnap Satan President Allah bomb explosion paradise virgin enemy revolution oil fucking Nazis
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
This is why I block all traffic from Reston, VA.
a) they initially were bandwidth hogs.
b) I know the sorts of military-complex contractors that work there.
It was the fact that they signed up for every RSS feed my tiny blog provides ... over 1200 of them that caught my attention. Who signs up for 1200 comment feeds?
The user agent was something like "brand-monitor" but I don't really remember it. I'm happy to help here:
* Microsoft sucks
* Oracle sucks
* Apple sucks more than both of those
* Adobe sucks the most
There, they don't need to monitor my blog anymore.
DHS and TSA need to be shutdown. Too much power is concentrated in too few people. We should be allowed to travel freely without any ID and paying cash for tickets. Definitely without being x-ray'd or groped. If the President of the USA senators, congress people, and foreign ambassadors don't have to get groped getting on an airplane, then my wife and I shouldn't either.
Hopefully, my next few overseas flights go without incidence and without "special security", but I doubt it.
but we are in the US, so we have square feet
ah, that explains the high cost of shoes, here, then!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(...and, for that matter, if Lex Luthor is up to tricks, shouldn't they want to catch him?)
I think DHS has more important things to bother themselves with than the theft of forty cakes.
Great, now you've got Lex Luthor with a utility belt and an invisible plane.
Exactly. I wonder how many millions of dollars of our taxes these idiots are wasting to find out there's absolutely no useful information to be found on social networks? I guarantee I could have told them that for FAR less.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Yeah, but when it floods down in Texas, all of the telephone lines are down... How's the word gonna get out??
kmem russian roulette: Aquillar> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem bs=1 count=1 seek=$RANDOM
Until it was pointed out that they were yellow, that is.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Do they think anybody would say anything in clear if they were trying to hide something? With the words all spelled out correctly? If this really is the list they're using, the DHS employee responsible for this ineffective fiasco should be fired. Moreover, DHS should hire a competent linguist and have them evaluate their software for semantic analysis and relevance scoring. I could do a better analysis by scanning for n-gram and word frequency patterns extracted from known terrorist writings.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Use all those words in every one of your posts on all social networks.
And stupid ones. Never forget people are stupid. Nobody is 100% on the ball at all times.
Even then, the terrorist(s) themselves might be on the ball, but everyone around them? Look, employees at my cousin's job are stupid enough to tell family members confidential information who then go out to the bar and loudly shout it out, especially when they were all told "You will be fired for leaking this, this is only being told to you all because we know some of you are disgruntled because we don't trust you. Don't prove us right. YOU WILL BE FIRED."
All it takes is one loose lip to the wrong person who thinks Twitter is private.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
...and thus how the pharases are used in combination there's no basis for judging the list "stupid" or otherwise.
(Knowing that it is from the DHS, on the other hand...)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Sorry but I find your thinking to be more like rationalizing what possibility might exist for them to be scanning for these words rather than anything a realistic statement of why they would be scanning social media networks.
If there's any kind of an emergency I am quite sure that local, state, regional, etc authorities (ie your local 911 hotline people) have procedures they should be following to be CLEARLY stating to the feds that there is a crisis, what the situation is, etc. that would be much more efficient than scanning the chaos of twitter (etc). There is NO need for such agencies (or in this case YET ANOTHER private subcontractor) to be scanning public social networks for such information.
I think it more likely there's a subset of these terms that is really of interest to the agencies and the rest of it is fluff to make it look more reasonable. I can't even begin to imagine how many 'hits' they would get if they actually cared about all of the keywords listed.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Closer to 11 times.
It would take over 200 years to kill us all.
And thats assuming we dont have babies.
Beyond the emotional aspect of watching buildings fall down... it was really a pretty impotent attack.
Meh, it's more likely they are looking for "Wikileaks, impeachment, campaign donation, sub-committee, fiat currency, universal healthcare."
You know, to find the real terrorists.
I am John Hurt.
Aw, geez, not this shit again. Clark Kent is a reporter. He wears glasses. Superman is... Superman. He's weird and cool. And he does not. Wear. GLASSES!
Give it up already.
I drank what? -- Socrates
And a hot bustier! Tim Curry will be jealous.
I drank what? -- Socrates
"Exercise"? Hey, no exercise for you, joggers! "Drill"? Barb wire around all Lowe's and Home Despots! "Recovery"? Nope, anyone sick here, go off and die. (Ooops, that'll flag this post, won't it?)
This reminds me of the early nineties, when Prodigy in Germany tried to ban naughty words... which, of course, hit things like the port of Brest, and breast cancer survivors' newsgroup, and....
mark "they're not only paid to have no sense of humor, they seem to take it as not to have any sense, period"
They forgot a few, C64, IBM, NES, SNES, N64, PSX, PS2, PS3, XBOX, WII, XBOX360, DC, GB, GBA, NDS, 7800, CVS, Mac, NEO-GEO, etc.
As it turns out many terms including seemingly benign words such as flu, agent, response, cops drill, etc are on the list of words that set off warning bells for the government spooks.
Anyone think that maybe there's going to be a flurry of activity as those who like to tweak DHS post comments containing words like "flu," "agent," "response," "cops" and "drill" on Twitter, Facebook, G+, etc.? I'm sure it would be annoying for DHS to have to wade through all of those false positives containing words like "flu," "agent," "response," "cops" and "drill." Not that *I* would ever post anything like "flu," "agent," "response," "cops" and "drill." just to be obnoxious or anything ;)
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I post serial fiction on my blog at Wordpress which gets cross-posted to Facebook. You just gave me the text for my next story.
Thanks, Slashdot!
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Maybe you need to add a few more layers of tinfoil to your hat.
Don't you remember the bitching and whining about how long FEMA took when New Orleans got flooded? Relief supplies weren't getting there fast enough to suit people. It's almost as if the public did not realize that the feds do not have squadrons of reefer trucks full of ice idling on strip alert 24/7 just waiting to spring into action the very instant a natural disaster occurs in case someone needs a cool refreshing drink afterwards.
If FEMA knows there is a crisis before the locals are even able to alert them they can begin to evaluate the situation on their own and begin staging whatever assets will be required to handle the situation if things are serious enough to need their intervention. Say they start seeing a shitload of tweets about a massive earthquake in Los Angeles. Things like: "Huge quake in LA!! Still shaking." "Overpass in LA just collapsed." They'll know something is up and can start things moving on their end instead of just sitting around waiting for the locals to call them once the situation permits.
That is Coca-Cola's job. Don't you watch the adverts at Christmas?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The issue, though, is that with operational security this is all rendered moot.
I'm gonna swing by the store (highly illegal black market) to buy some bananas (AK-47s) and apples (hand grenades). Do you want me to pick up anything (do you think the line is tapped)?
Oh shit, I just had a completely mundane discussion while passing information back and forth. What are they going to do, track for trends of apples and bananas being used in the same sentence? The signal-to-noise ratio would be ridiculous.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
The populace is turning on them now. They've been divided by the tried-and-true panis et circenses, but the Tea Party and Occupy forces are beginning to realize that they have common cause against those who control both sides of the fence (at least in America).
Soldiers do not, by and large, originate from the 1%. They come from the strata that are least privileged in our society. And as well trained/brainwashed as they are, they cannot fully divorce themselves from the economic realities of their families.
It's only a matter of time until the populace and the soldiers collectively wake up, look at each other, and realize that the most dire threat to their liberty and well-being exists internally in the form of the 1% and their hired help in the US govt.
I look forward with delightful anticipation to the day when night on the Eastern Seaboard is lit by the bonfires of the mansions of the 1%. I have been stockpiling hot dogs and marshmallows for that day.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I guess it's time to update M-x spook in emacs...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Updating it to include DHS as well as TSA. :-)
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Heh...
btw, anyone else notice this retarded power button in the upper right corner that they use to log off? makes NO sense. wow, slashdot is retarded.
And this just in: WikiLeaks Uncovers Report Showing Homeland Security Monitored Occupy Movement
The question was "Are they trying to catch real-world terrorists or Lex Luthor?" so we're trying to ascertain who the real target here is. The reply suggests who the target is. How did you manage to interpret this incorrectly?
Don't you remember the bitching and whining about how long FEMA took when New Orleans got flooded? Relief supplies weren't getting there fast enough to suit people.
And the response would have been quicker with the current monitoring how? Or are you saying no one at FEMA, nor anyone related to a FEMA employee, nor anyone dealing with FEMA employees was aware that the levees broke in New Orleans and that it was a disaster of epic proportions because none of them watch TV or listen to a radio? It would have only taken 1.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Don't even joke about that.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I lol'd out loud at the Lex Luthor comment.
Have you looked at the ones they arrest for "plotting"? They're looking for guys dumb enough, when the federal provacateur shows up, to make up fantasies about all the things they'd like to see explode. But they wouldn't want to encourage anyone along those lines who was, you know, smart enough to actually carry it off if the operation went out of control.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Some people, when confronted with Lex Luthor, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.
President Santorum? Has sort of a ring to it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Santorum/Palin 2012!
can we just do the same thing as with the DVD key?
add a list of such words to all posts all the time?
and monitoring Twitter is a cheap way of getting basic coverage for everything everywhere, so why not do it?
Risking being mocked on the internet is a reason not to do it.
That's President Sanitarium to you sir!!!
What terrorist would talk in plain text on social networks about serious stuff?
I dunno, one stupid enough to believe his god wanted him to blow up a plane full of people and the reward for doing this will be 40 eternal virgins?
The rest of your post I agree with, we're wasting too much money on an insignificant threat. Just lets not act like terrorists are smarter than DHS. It's idiots fighting idiots, all on the taxpayers expense, and all designed to distract the taxpayer.
Let's see who can come up with the longest coherent sentence using as many of those words as possible. Here's one:
The bursting brown mudslide caused interstate erosion followed by an evacuation of fundamentalists across the border which created a flu outbreak causing street and bridge collapses.
That's just a start I'm sure.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Molly, I really loved seeing you tonight. Happy Birthday! Chemical weapons.
Molly, put on a "chemical romance" album and ride my massive weapon.
I'm surprised under the heading of attack or infrastructure, they didn't' list "EMP" or Electromagnetic Pulse, and variants.
But even funnier are the drug names, as they're all proper. Really, what druggie or smuggler refers to their wares by their proper name? Shouldn't they be looking for, "pot", "weed", "blow", "horse", "smack", and stuff like that? (with a decent algorithm to sort out gardening and equine related discussions, natch)
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
So did Chancellor Hitler.
He takes off his glasses when he transforms? That doesn't make any sense! How would he be able to see?
I put the whole list up in a /. journal entry, NSA line-eater redux - 2012 DHS Media Monitoring terms.
I think I got most of the dupes. I hope I didn't leave anything out.
I used to be able to edit my journal entries but I can't figure it out with the new system.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So did Chancellor Hitler.
So did Chancellor Palpatine.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Let's give Ft. Meade a collective heart attack:
"nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile,
nuke, bomb, coke, drug, rocket, missile...."
Replace the Department of Homeland Security with "Download Ham Sandwich". If some pork shunners do not like it, there's always [KP2]972[ST].
You forgot "false flag"
I come here for the love
Are there any to dislike?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thanks, now I'm going to have nightmares all night.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I bet you ride a Harley compatible, don't you?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Don't you remember the bitching and whining about how long FEMA took when New Orleans got flooded?
Stop it, cowardly, anonymous, government trollshill. FEMA took a long time to provide inferior aid to New Orleans after it was flooded because they didn't give a fuck, not because they didn't know New Orleans was underwater.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
(...and, for that matter, if Lex Luthor is up to tricks, shouldn't they want to catch him?)
Since we all know that we can't leave it up to superman, I mean really, he's got infinite power and still can't catch this one guy.
I have to take a leak. Also, this electric drill I bought last week to work on a bust of Steve Jobs has an emergency recall on it from the manufacturer- shows symptoms of power failure. My target date for completion of the project- without help and delays- depends on how much time I spend on these social media sites; they sure are addictive... almost like narcotics. BTW, has anyone seen that remake of 3:10 to Yuma? I heard it's pretty good.
Catch him? I doubt it, Hire him definitely!
that makes everyone here pretty much a suspect then i suppose, what a nice way to spend tax money with the world in a state like this ... who analyzes the data when the red light goes on anyway? have they finally found a use for those monkeys attempting to recreate shakespeare then?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/spook.html
If you use emacs it has a spook function, just type M-x spook and it will paste some suitable words into the current buffer.
Tested it and it still works:
assassination domestic disruption FSF 64 Vauxhall Cross rs9512c spies
Lexis-Nexis Baranyi Uzbekistan NSA high security SAFE USDOJ warfare
22nd SAS
+1
I would suspect it was worse than that. I would suspect it was a case of "The white folks evacuated so take your time." However, considering what a clusterfuck of a failure the incompetent, way over his head FEMA director "Godd job Brownie" was, Hanlon's razor probably applies.
I don't think it was apathy, I think it was incompetence. Bush had a bad habit of appointing cronies like Brown who had no experience or training whatever for the job they were doing to important positions. Bush was just like Illinois' last Governor, who will be in Federal prison in a couple of weeks.
Concidering the damage heBush did to the country, I think Bush should be in a cell with Blago.
Free Martian Whores!