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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.
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
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.
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
... 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
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".
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
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.
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/723/
Why would a bunch of Nazis monitor a bunch of Nazis?
Which in turn increases the pretext for ramping up security? Again why would anyone in power monitor that, other than to know where to send cheques? It's not like the people who run the country perform abortions, or give a flying fuck about those who do. And religious turmoil is always good, that is the perfect distract from anything and everything that matters.
Yeah, I'm being cranky. So what. Also, Lenny will perform the Green Cheese at the Saturday Lane with a scooter full of bobcats and two, at 72 north hotel sigma poopyhead alpha.
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
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.
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)
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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".
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. ;)
Yeah and I can think of only two words scarier - President Palin.
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).
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."
Great, now you've got Lex Luthor with a utility belt and an invisible plane.
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
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
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
And this just in: WikiLeaks Uncovers Report Showing Homeland Security Monitored Occupy Movement
President Santorum? Has sort of a ring to it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.