The Daily Mail in the UK has published a list of words monitored by department of Homeland Security. Many of them are used on this site quite regularly (and innocently). People have often wondered if the IRS is monitoring the site, perhaps it’s not just the IRS but the DHS, as well.
“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.”
Words include Mexico, disaster, jihad, law enforcement, collapse, plot, closure.
Uh oh, now I’ve done it. I’ve used several all in one post.
If lots website were tagged wtth Petro’s list it would make the whole exercise somewhat useless or at least waste time investigating.
@ Petros
What are “Mexicles”? I could understand Canicles (we’ve got the the climate for it) but I can’t imagine anything freezing in Mexico.
@outraged
I wonder if the Daily Mail is now on the watch list by putting all of those words on a site in one go. For that matter, now, your post has ensured that this site is on the watch list. 😉
@Zuludogm, I think we’re in good company, considering the long list of words!
@Em, to my surprise, mexicle is a real word, thanks for pulling that one out! Could apparently be a popsicle, a gang in mexico, a Texas prison gang or a game? I’m sure DHS would be on the lookout, though, for reportedly really bad popsicles enjoyed by mexicans in their own country.
Oh my my. Tornado and hurricane are on the list. As are snow, sleet, blizzard, and lightning. Be afraid, Environment Canada Weather Service, be vewy vewy afraid, your weather bulletins are monitored by DHS as potential “tewwowist” (does DHS make allowance for Elmer Fudd spellings?) communications! I guess I better stop discussing the weather in my emails to my sister the prairie farmer …
Then there’s the word “smart.” I’d be more worried about “stupid” if I were DHS, there’s so much stupid floating around in that organization. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, what a bunch of maroons. (Oops, I just gave DHS another word to add to their list!) Where are Mel Blanc and Chuck Jones now we really need them?
Sadly, the whole insane asylum south of our border increasingly seems to have been taken over by the lunatics. If in any doubt, just read most pages of the Congressional Record these days … Yep, exceptional is right.
Boy am I glad I left that place more than 40 years ago and ditched (better not use the “r” word) my USC a few years thereafter … every day and in every way, my decision back then seems better and better.
Thanks for making my afternoon, Petros and Outragedcanadian.
Why am I reminded of boggarts and the counter-curse “riddiculus” from one of the Harry Potter novels?
Here’s an afterthought to my boggart reference from J. K. Rowling — send the link and some of the words on it to every American relative you have. Holding the DHS up to public ridicule is the best way to counter them. Go for it.
Some of the keywords might be included not as attempts to villify the sites where the words are employed, but only to get additional information on things that we might all agree that the US government (and all governments) should be concerned about. For example “scammers” could lead to sites about African advance-fee fraud, allowing the government to see what sort of tactics are being used by the scammers (I have seen several blog sites where usually non-violent vigilantes exchange tips on how to try to bait such scammers and then humiliate them, warn people about them, and/or get enough information to turn them into the police, or at least give the police better information on scammer modus operandi so that the police are better able to warn people against getting caught up in the scams, and chase the scammers when they have a good enough lead.).
I myself have been the target of scammers (everybody has probably received strange emails) via email and even by postal mail. After I had received a few strange letters that promised outrageous amounts of money posted from one country and asking me to contact entitie(s) in other countrie(s), I once wrote the national police authorities in my country, with the scam letters attached, to let them know what some gang was trying to do to me, and probably others, some of which might not be smart enough to smell fish or a rat. They responded politely that they knew of the type of scam, but were interested in the material I gave them because it might lead them to a new group of people that were trying to defraud naive people. They said they would update their database with the return addresses and entities I was supposed to contact, along with copies of the scam letters. When and if they nail these people on a concrete case where they actually stole money from somebody, they can use the evidence I gave them to support the case against the crooks.
Even if you don’t always like the police in your country, sometimes there are things that you really want the police to know about. Maybe they will spend more time chasing the real criminals who try to screw honest citizens instead of people who just want the US to leave them alone.
It’s not all bad. We are exersizing freedom of speech and freedom of the press here at Isaac Brock. To my mind, the notion of free press and speech also means that everybody has the right to read what we have to say and find us through whatever keyword they want to try. As long as the readers don’t practice censure, spam us with negative comments that are unmotivated or off the subject, or shut us down. Let Unca Sam read our blog, he might learn something that would change his mind and policies.