Logorrhea
I don’t know about you, but when the government acts stupidly like this, I don’t like it. The list of “forbidden” words is so ridiculously broad so as to be meaningless. I don’t deny there are evil people in the world, and I expect my government to protect me from these criminals as best as a government can, but this is not the way. Monitoring conversations that contain “pork”? or the word, “cloud”? Defeats the purpose by purposely bringing in lots of non-relevant data.
By now you have likely seen reports that contain news of the list of terms the Department of Homeland Security searches for online, as it tracks what people are saying around the Internet. The list is extremely long, vague, and often quite humorous (even in the face of its importance).
As the Daily Mail notes, the Department of Homeland Security was forced to release the list, along with its entire Analyst’s Desktop Binder, following a Freedom of Information Act request. Essentially, the list is what the government is looking for online, hoping to spot threats, events, and other such things that would be of interest to the sprawling agency. The Mails report states that the Department has made the claim that the list is not used to search “the internet for disparaging remarks about the government [or] signs of general dissent.”
However, the list is worrisome all the same. The broadness of the terms that are being used as a starting point for tracking online communications is disconcerting; these are the words that could flag a person or conversation as potentially a threat to the United States. And thus, to have terms that come up in the daily news, and normal conversation, marked as worthy of tracking, is unsettling.
…
Therefore, anyone in the media, period, doesn’t have the right to have their private information kept secret by the Department of Homeland Security. Woah. Scarier is how broad this is – anyone who uses social media to update others, and is merely ‘known’ as perhaps being a ‘reporter’ has no right to their PII being kept secret. In other words, if you are online, and comment on the news to an audience, you are essentially absolving the Department of Homeland Security from the need of redacting your private information, including “1) full name; 2) affiliation; 3) position or title; and 3) publicly-available user ID.”
I’m certainly not trying to be overly paranoid or tin-hatted, but the rules on how PII can be distributed for the above listed groups sounds quite like this: ‘if you fall into any of these categories, we are going to use any information about you that we can in any level of government, foreign or domestic.’ And that, if you are but an active user of social media that happens to be talking about an issue that is on their list of terms, you just may fall into the group. Now, to the list.
The following list of terms is directly taken from the Binder. Again, I had to strip them out, clean the text, and them format it, so please just take the list. Don’t do all that tedious work all over again. This post is for anyone. Educate people. Here you go:
The List
- 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
- Chemical 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
- Airplane (and derivatives)
- Chemical fire
- CIKR (Critical Infrastructure& Key Resources)
- AMTRAK
- Collapse
- Computer infrastructure
- Communications infrastructure
- Telecommunications
- Critical infrastructure
- National infrastructure
- Metro
- WMATA
- Subway
- BART
- MARTA
- Port Authority
- NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center)
- Transportation security
- Grid
- Power
- SmartBody scanner
- Electric
- Failure or outage
- Black out
- Brown out
- Port
- Dock
- Bridge
- Cancelled
- 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
- Mexican army
- Methamphetamine
- Cartel de Golfo
- Gulf Cartel
- La Familia
- Reynosa
- Nuevo
- Leon
- Narcos
- Narco banners (Spanish equivalents)
- Los Zetas
- Shootout
- Execution
- Gunfight
- Trafficking
- Kidnap
- Calderon Reyosa
- Bust
- Tamaulipas
- Meth Lab
- Drug trade
- Illegal immigrants
- Smuggling (smugglers)
- Matamoros
- Michoacana
- Guzman
- Arellano-Felix
- Beltran-Leyva
- Barrio
- Azteca
- Artistic
- Assassins
- Mexicles
- New Federation
- Terrorism
- Al Qaeda (all spellings)
- 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 Tigers
- PLF (Palestine Liberation Front)
- PLO (Palestine Liberation 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
- Emergency
- Hurricane
- Tornado
- Twister
- Tsunami
- Earthquake
- Tremor
- Flood
- Storm
- Crest
- Temblor
- Extreme weather
- Forest fire
- Brush fire
- Ice
- Stranded/Stuck
- Help
- Hail
- Wildfire
- Tsunami
- Warning Center
- Magnitude
- Avalanche
- Typhoon
- Shelter-in-place
- Disaster
- Snow
- Blizzard
- Sleet
- Mud slide or Mudslide
- Erosion
- Power outage
- Brown out
- Warning
- Watch
- Lightening
- Aid
- Relief
- Closure
- Interstate
- Burst
- Emergency Broadcast System
- Cyber security
- Botnet
- DDOS (dedicated denial of service)
- Denial of service
- Malware
- Virus
- Trojan
- Keylogger
- Cyber
- Command
- 2600
- Spammer
- Phishing
- Rootkit
- Phreaking
- Cain and abel
- Brute forcing
- Mysql injection
- Cyber attack
- Cyber terror
- Hacker
- China
- Conficker
- Worm
- Scammers
- Social media
(click here to continue reading Your Digital Privacy and the US Gov’s Watchlist.)