Janet Napolitano goes Blackalicious on the interwebs
March 4, 2012 3:04 PM   Subscribe

Agriculture avalanche avian bacteria border botnet carbomb China drill drug drug war earthquake execution forest fire gang gas grid hack heroin hostage interstate Islamist Jihad Juarez keylogger kidnap La Familia looting malware marijuana meth lab nationalist nuclear outbreak Pakistan pandemic pipebomb pirates power lines radicals relief resistant Ricin riot San Deigo scammers screening symptoms Tamiflu terror U.S. Consulate violence virus warning weapons grade wildfire, and Yemen.

Animal New York releases US Department of Homeland Security Facebook and Twitter watchlists. As far as privacy goes, Animal has this to say:

To be fair, the DHS does have an internal privacy policy that attempts to strip your “PII”–Personally Identifiable Information–from the aggregated tweets and status updates, with some broad exceptions…
posted by nickrussell (47 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Good luck flying, nickrussell.
posted by Space_Lady at 3:06 PM on March 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


No, nickrussell! You've doomed us all! The DHS is going to come down on MetaFilter in 5... 4... 3...
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:07 PM on March 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


First person to turn this into a punk rock chanting chorus wins.
posted by The Whelk at 3:07 PM on March 4, 2012 [8 favorites]


First person to turn this into a punk rock chanting chorus wins.

The first bit at least works pretty well to the rhythm of "We Didn't Start The Fire".
posted by saturday_morning at 3:09 PM on March 4, 2012 [12 favorites]


"heckuva job, brownie."
posted by chavenet at 3:09 PM on March 4, 2012


Coincidence: I was just searching DuckDuckGo and Google for how to translate "half-assed" into Italian.
posted by trip and a half at 3:12 PM on March 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Didn't we do this already with Carnivore to no success? Guess it's time to bomb out some FBI servers again.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 3:12 PM on March 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lets all cut and paste this into a facebook status message...
posted by sfts2 at 3:14 PM on March 4, 2012


Well, as I said on fb, after the Alternet article came out, I hope they learn something from my many (work-related) posts about (new, accurate research on) drugs, the (enormous problems and costs caused by the failed) war on drugs, and (opportunities and reasons to join the campaigns to legalize) marijuana.
posted by gingerbeer at 3:16 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Didn't we do this already with Carnivore to no success?

You're thinking of ThinThread.

Note that the 'was' is misleading.
posted by clarknova at 3:19 PM on March 4, 2012




Uhh.... do they know something about San Diego that they're not telling us?
posted by argonauta at 3:28 PM on March 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


San Diego is a really big military town with many bases and labs and the Pacific Fleet in addition to being a big port and near the border.
posted by The Whelk at 3:29 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


I can't take it any more!
posted by Flashman at 3:30 PM on March 4, 2012


First person to turn this into a punk rock chanting chorus wins.

The first bit at least works pretty well to the rhythm of "We Didn't Start The Fire".


I was thinking of "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" myself.
posted by pernoctalian at 3:32 PM on March 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Write each of them on a card and film yourself dropping the cards in black and white, Dylan-style, to a twangy guitar shuffle riff.
posted by jquinby at 3:35 PM on March 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I unfriended DHS after a big falling out because I said they reminded me of a Mucca Pazza Mucca Pazza show.
posted by Lukenlogs at 3:36 PM on March 4, 2012


Wow, good thing I am a journalist otherwise my feed would probably be nonstop trouble. Not that I'm especially reassured. I also wonder why cocaine didn't make the cut?
posted by Maias at 3:37 PM on March 4, 2012


how to translate "half-assed" into Italian.

Demiculato.
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:41 PM on March 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


For a minute, I tried to parse the entire thing as if it was a headline in The Sunday Sun.
posted by Nomyte at 3:42 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Maias: "Wow, good thing I am a journalist otherwise my feed would probably be nonstop trouble. Not that I'm especially reassured. I also wonder why cocaine didn't make the cut?"

True. Especially since I re-post many of your articles on my fb!
posted by gingerbeer at 3:57 PM on March 4, 2012


This seems like it would return a truly unwieldy number of hits. How many, "got the flu =(" statuses do they have to dig through?
posted by cmoj at 3:57 PM on March 4, 2012


I don't see how this information could be useful for anything except giving you a general idea of how many people are talking about the search terms.

Unless maybe the machine is real and this is just more grist for its mill.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:03 PM on March 4, 2012


Metafilter: how to translate "half-assed" into Italian
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:08 PM on March 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Uhh.... do they know something about San Diego that they're not telling us?

Carmen is on the secret Most Wanted list, and has been evading authorities since the 1980's.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 4:12 PM on March 4, 2012 [15 favorites]


On part of me understands why Earthquake is on the list given that FEMA is now part of homeland security, but I'd think the USGS trumps Facebook as a reliable source.

But I have this nagging suspicion that they're trying to keep California safe from Christopher Walken and that doesn't exactly do anything to make me feel more secure.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:15 PM on March 4, 2012


Looks like if you mention you're taking BART to go to Target to buy Trojans, you must be a triple threat.
posted by MtDewd at 4:26 PM on March 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


You gotta feel for the drones whose job it is to plow through the comment sections of mainstream news sites every day. *shudder* Not quite as bad as prison, I suppose. Anyway, from jeffburdge's EPIC link:

Though DHS testified that it does not monitor for public reaction to government proposals, the documents obtained by EPIC indicate that the DHS analysts are specifically instructed to look for criticism of the agency....

EPIC goes into a lot more detail about the program, which appears in large part to involve monitoring of constitutionally-protected criticism of the government, here:

The records reveal that the DHS is paying General Dynamics to monitor the news. The agency instructed the company to monitor for "[media] reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government, DHS, or prevent, protect, respond government activities."

The DHS is attempting to "capture public reaction to major government proposals."

The DHS instructed the social media monitoring company to generate "reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS."


This appears to have very little to do with terrorism, and everything to do with monitoring US citizens for signs of peaceful dissent. How disgusting. Also, I know we've made strides in large-scale processing of huge batches of data, but the volume this would collect reminds me of the huge backlog of unprocessed communications the FBI had collected - and which sat unanalyzed - before 9/11. There's no way they can meaningfully process this stuff, is there?
posted by mediareport at 4:28 PM on March 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


Nomyte: “For a minute, I tried to parse the entire thing as if it was a headline in The Sunday Sun.”

That doesn't really work, though – it's far too meaningful.
posted by koeselitz at 4:53 PM on March 4, 2012


To be fair, the DHS does have an internal privacy policy that attempts to strip your “PII”...from the aggregated tweets

New news: NPR introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth.”

It's up to DHS to prove that it strips anything. Otherwise, there's every reason to think that Total Information Awareness is alive and well. The Inquisition was well aware that a few words can be used to hang someone. This invasion of private communications changes everything. Given history, there is no value whatever in accepting facile assurances.
posted by Twang at 5:05 PM on March 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


M-x spook
posted by Rat Spatula at 5:10 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Suspiciously absent: "machine that blocks out the sun" and "let's go do evil stuff".
posted by BitterOldPunk at 5:31 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Favorited just for the Blackalicious reference.
posted by hypersloth at 5:44 PM on March 4, 2012


What, no red mercury? No yellow cake? No mention of irradiation or half-life of unstable isotopes?

I think we're going to have to centrifuge this idea for a while, to enrich the yield of dual use terms. Otherwise we might subvert the overt humor of this tread.
posted by MikeWarot at 6:04 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Offtopic: I just finished reading Neal Stephenson's Reamde and when I read the blurb, I thought "What, he's writing a sequel to that thing?"
posted by tksh at 6:52 PM on March 4, 2012


Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs
posted by klangklangston at 7:06 PM on March 4, 2012


The first bit at least works pretty well to the rhythm of "We Didn't Start The Fire".

holy cow it does

Agriculture avian, avalanche bacteria
border botnet, carbomb, china
marijuana

Execution,earthquake, nuclear outbreak
North Korea South Korea *
La Familia

Islamist gang power lines
pandemic interstate,
San Diego weapons grade, government shop

keyloggers, fire gas
power grid massive hack
riots terror kidnap plot
Jihad hostage getting shot

We didn't start the fire….


* What, those two have to be on the list somewhere.
posted by eriko at 7:22 PM on March 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


Uhh.... do they know something about San Diego that they're not telling us?

Little known fact: Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina.
posted by amorphatist at 7:36 PM on March 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


...weapons grade wildfire, and Yemen.

Oh, no. I type "and" online all the time!
posted by gurple at 9:27 PM on March 4, 2012


Agriculture avian, avalanche bacteria
border botnet, carbomb, china
marijuana

Execution,earthquake, nuclear outbreak
North Korea South Korea *
La Familia

Islamist gang power lines
pandemic interstate,
San Diego weapons grade, government shop

keyloggers, fire gas
power grid massive hack
riots terror kidnap plot
Jihad hostage getting shot


I've been everywhere, man,
I've been everywhere, man,
Crossed the deserts bare, man,
Breathed the mountain air, man,
Of travel I've had my share, man,
I've been everywhere.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:13 AM on March 5, 2012 [2 favorites]


Of course, we all know they can see everything (Facebook giving the govt. a backdoor is the most natural thing ever) but ostensibly, is this culled only from public posts?
posted by dunkadunc at 12:39 AM on March 5, 2012


I also wonder why cocaine didn't make the cut?

Looking for un-cut cocaine, eh?
posted by ShutterBun at 12:49 AM on March 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


"You straight?" is how the people in my town ask "would you care for some cocaine?" Let's add "you straight?" to the list.
posted by telstar at 1:34 AM on March 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


First person to turn this into a punk rock chanting chorus wins.

321zero Car bomb!
posted by googly at 6:26 AM on March 5, 2012


There is such a thing as information overload. Just sayin'
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 6:29 AM on March 5, 2012


San Diego is a really big military town with many bases and labs and the Pacific Fleet in addition to being a big port and near the border.

A few of the 9/11 hijackers lived here for a while, too, taking piloting lessons.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 10:05 AM on March 5, 2012


Demiculato.

Grazie mille, Pallas Athena!
posted by trip and a half at 11:42 AM on March 5, 2012


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