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Origanalist
09-03-2019, 01:25 PM
https://b-i.forbesimg.com/reuvencohen/files/2013/06/300px-US_Department_of_Homeland_Security_Seal.svg_5.png

If you are thinking about tweeting about clouds, pork, exercise or even Mexico, think again. Doing so may result in a closer look by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In a story appearing earlier today on the U.K's Daily Mail website, it was reported that the DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as "signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S."

The list was posted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, before suing to obtain the release of the documents. The documents were part of 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 information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats. The Daily Mail's article noted the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, describing it's choice of words as 'broad, vague and ambiguous'.

What wasn't disclosed is how the agency actually gains access to the various search engines and social networks to monitor the specified keywords. My guess is the DHS has a "special arrangement" with companies like Google GOOG +0%, Facebook FB +0%, Microsoft MSFT +0%, Yahoo and Twitter to gain secure direct API access. This type of access would allow it to use distributed cloud technologies to monitor the daily flow of social media and search activity in something close to real time.


I would love to learn more about the technologies used to accomplish this type of social / web monitoring. The applications for monitoring trends and social statics are fascinating when applied to other industry sectors. Given the extent of the monitoring, I'm sure this post itself is now coming up on the DHS radar, so please feel free to leave a comment with any insights.

(Update 1: Reading through the Desktop Binder, I discovered the DHS Twitter account is @dhsnocmmc1 and DHS appears to be using tweetdeck to monitor the various keywords. See Page 38 -- Also interesting to note they seem to be using a Mac Mini as a server, and no password vaults. All Passwords appear to be shared in a plain text word document.)

(Update 2: On page 37, DHS instructs analysts to accept invalid SSL certificates forever without verification. Although invalid SSL warnings often appear in benign situations, they can also signal a man-in-the-middle attack. Not a good practice for the security conscious. Thanks to @obraon twitter for the tip.)


Full List of Keywords & Search Terms continued on next page.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/#3f63817bacd0

pcosmar
09-03-2019, 01:37 PM
Full List of Keywords & Search Terms continued on next page.

]

Copy/Paste

Brian4Liberty
09-03-2019, 01:51 PM
...

Full List of Keywords & Search Terms continued on next page.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/#3f63817bacd0

And here’s the link without a tracking ID:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/

A useless list of meaningless words for the most part. There is one single combination that they are most interested in though. Possibly the only one they actually pay attention to: “homeland security”. Any criticism or budget discussions would be high priority.

Working Poor
09-03-2019, 01:52 PM
Someone should compose a story using all the key words and get about 100,000 people to post it on every social media platform

Brian4Liberty
09-03-2019, 02:11 PM
Someone should compose a story using all the key words and get about 100,000 people to post it on every social media platform

Same thing I thought. ;)

Occam's Banana
09-03-2019, 02:32 PM
[...]

What wasn't disclosed is how the agency actually gains access to the various search engines and social networks to monitor the specified keywords. My guess is the DHS has a "special arrangement" with companies like Google GOOG +0%, Facebook FB +0%, Microsoft MSFT +0%, Yahoo and Twitter to gain secure direct API access. This type of access would allow it to use distributed cloud technologies to monitor the daily flow of social media and search activity in something close to real time.

[...]


FEC chair summons Facebook, Twitter, Google to disinformation session (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/29/fec-chair-facebook-twitter-google-disinformation-1692742)
By NANCY SCOLA 08/29/2019


The chair of the FEC is summoning Facebook, Google and Twitter to a meeting next month on digital disinformation [...]

DHS ... FEC ... at this point, they should just go ahead and officially create a new three-letter agency ... call it FGT ...

TheTexan
09-03-2019, 02:43 PM
It makes sense that they would monitor radical nationalist/extremism organizations. Such as this one.