Venture Beat
The world now has access to a list of words and phrases that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security uses to monitor social networks and news article comments for terrorism and general threats against the country.
The list was part of a 39-page “2011 Analyst’s Desktop Binder”
document that was released due to a Freedom of Information Act request
by privacy watchdog organization Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The list contains references to all the related governmental agencies,
obvious references to threats (attack, nuclear threat, etc.) and then
some pretty generic words like pork, cloud, electric, port, dock, and
many others.
The overall report is interesting because it sheds some light on how
these security agencies are trained to track potential threats online,
but it does raise more than a few questions. For instance, why is
Homeland Security tracking many vague terms, and what do they do with
this information once its been identified as a possible threat?
The department claims that the practice is simply to monitor activity
and not to track anti-U.S. comments made by individuals — a practice
currently employed by the governments of Iran and Syria.-[Full Article]
Analyst Desktop Binder_REDACTED
