DHS forced to reveal hundreds of keywords used to spy on you online
Did you know that mere using the names of some government agencies on social media sites is enough to get yourself monitored by Homeland Security?
The Daily Mail (UK) reports,
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.
Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.
The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.
The Daily Mail article page displays a list of these keywords spanning three pages, but does leave of the initial partial page of that list, which is important. This is where the government agencies are all included in the list of keywords:
