Homeland Security
The US Department of Homeland Security was compelled to release the list of keywords they have been using to screen social networking sites and media sites in order to decipher signals from terrorists and other types of threats against the US Government. This list has been released following a request made on the basis of freedom of information. The list draws attention to the way how government agents and analysts are trained to patrol the World Wide Web in search of any type of internal or external threat.
Ironically, the list has some of the obvious choices one would guess like ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’, ‘attack’ and ‘dirt bomb’. However, the list also has hundreds of online words that are seemingly ingenuous such as ‘team’, ‘cloud’, ‘pork’ or ‘Mexico’. The list of words can be obtained from the Analyst’s Desktop Binder 2011 released by the Department. This list is normally utilized by workers of the Department’s National Operations Center to isolate media reports reflecting negative responses and DHS activities.
However, this list was forced to be made public after a House hearing based on documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. The Department maintains that this practice is employed solely to identify and create awareness of potential threats to the country and not at governing the Internet for withering remarks made towards the government or to look for signals of general dissent.
Presently the list is made available online through the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group on privacy, who initiated the request based on the Freedom of Information Act. In a written statement sent to the Counter Terrorism and Intelligence Homeland Security Subcommittee, the Center has described the words used in this list as being ‘vague, ambiguous and broad’. According to a senior official of the Homeland Security this list is only a starting point for maintaining awareness of man-made and natural threats but it is by no means an endgame for the purpose.