Government spies wish they were this hip

Don't worry, people, the government isn't trying to spy on you, they just want to "tap it:"

Hat tip to Hot Air

Yo, Clapper, you getting all this?

It would appear that the Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center has a desktop reference manual to let its agents know what search terms to look for as they monitor the citizenry's Facebook postings, emails and what not. A site called Activist Post has put up a lot of information that apparently was reported in The Huffington Post, to which I decline to link. Not clear to me whether HuffPo obtained the release of the information, but they reported on it. In any event, there is now online a version of the DHS Analyst's Desktop Binder. This binder, it would appear, included a list of search terms the DHS uses in its online spying activities.  While I suppose this will make me a rising star on the DHS "watch this guy " list, here are ALL of the terms in the Analyst's Desktop Binder:

Domestic Security

Assassination Attack Domestic security Drill Exercise Cops Law enforcement Authorities Disaster assistance Disaster management DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office) National preparedness Mitigation Prevention Response Recovery Dirty bomb Domestic nuclear detection Emergency management Emergency response First responder Homeland security Maritime domain awareness (MDA) National preparedness initiative Militia Shooting Shots fired Evacuation Deaths Hostage Explosion (explosive) Police Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) Organized crime Gangs National security State of emergency Security Breach Threat Standoff SWAT Screening Lockdown Bomb (squad or threat) Crash Looting Riot Emergency Landing Pipe bomb Incident Facility HAZMAT & Nuclear Hazmat Nuclear Chemical spill Suspicious package/device Toxic National laboratory Nuclear facility Nuclear threat Cloud Plume Radiation Radioactive Leak Biological infection (or event) Chemical Chemical burn Biological Epidemic Hazardous Hazardous material incident Industrial spill Infection Powder (white) Gas Spillover Anthrax Blister agent Chemical agent Exposure Burn Nerve agent Ricin Sarin North Korea Health Concern + H1N1 Outbreak Contamination Exposure Virus Evacuation Bacteria Recall Ebola Food Poisoning Foot and Mouth (FMD) H5N1 Avian Flu Strain Quarantine H1N1 Vaccine Salmonella Small Pox Plague Human to human Human to Animal Influenza Center for Disease Control (CDC) Drug Administration (FDA) Public Health Toxic Agro Terror Tuberculosis (TB) Tamiflu Norvo Virus Epidemic Agriculture Listeria Symptoms Mutation Resistant Antiviral Wave Pandemic Infection Water/air borne Sick Swine Pork World Health Organization (WHO) (and components) Viral Hemorrhagic Fever E. Coli Infrastructure Security Infrastructure security Airport CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources) AMTRAK Collapse Computer infrastructure Communications infrastructure Telecommunications Critical infrastructure National infrastructure Metro WMATA Airplane (and derivatives) Chemical fire Subway BART MARTA Port Authority NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center) Transportation security Grid Power Smart Body scanner Electric Failure or outage Black out Brown out Port Dock Bridge Cancelled Delays Service disruption Power lines Southwest Border Violence Drug cartel Violence Gang Drug Narcotics Cocaine Marijuana Heroin Border Mexico Cartel Southwest Juarez Sinaloa Tijuana Torreon Yuma Tucson Decapitated U.S. Consulate Consular El Paso Fort Hancock San Diego Ciudad Juarez Nogales Sonora Colombia Mara salvatrucha MS13 or MS-13 Drug war Mexican army Methamphetamine Cartel de Golfo Gulf Cartel La Familia Reynosa Nuevo Leon Narcos Narco banners (Spanish equivalents) Los Zetas Shootout Execution Gunfight Trafficking Kidnap Calderon Reyosa Bust Tamaulipas Meth Lab Drug trade Illegal immigrants Smuggling (smugglers) Matamoros Michoacana Guzman Arellano-Felix Beltran-Leyva Barrio Azteca Artistic Assassins Mexicles New Federation Terrorism Terrorism Al Qaeda (all spellings) Terror Attack Iraq Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Agro Environmental terrorist Eco terrorism Conventional weapon Target Weapons grade Dirty bomb Enriched Nuclear Chemical weapon Biological weapon Ammonium nitrate Improvised explosive device IED (Improvised Explosive Device) Abu Sayyaf Hamas FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia) IRA (Irish Republican Army) ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) Basque Separatists Hezbollah Tamil Tigers PLF (Palestine Liberation Front) PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization Car bomb Jihad Taliban Weapons cache Suicide bomber Suicide attack Suspicious substance AQAP (AL Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) Yemen Pirates Extremism Somalia Nigeria Radicals Al-Shabaab Home grown Plot Nationalist Recruitment Fundamentalism Islamist Weather/Disaster/Emergency Emergency Hurricane Tornado Twister Tsunami Earthquake Tremor Flood Storm Crest Temblor Extreme weather Forest fire Brush fire Ice Stranded/Stuck Help Hail Wildfire Tsunami Warning Center Magnitude Avalanche Typhoon Shelter-in-place Disaster Snow Blizzard Sleet Mud slide or Mudslide Erosion Power outage Brown out Warning Watch Lightening Aid Relief Closure Interstate Burst Emergency Broadcast System Cyber Security Cyber security Botnet DDOS (dedicated denial of service) Denial of service Malware Virus Trojan Keylogger Cyber Command 2600 Spammer Phishing Rootkit Phreaking Cain and abel Brute forcing Mysql injection Cyber attack Cyber terror Hacker China Conficker Worm Scammers Social media

Get a good look? Next time you go on Facebook, remember not to use words like response, initiative, exercise, recovery, crash, police, recovery, facility, gas or burn. Not to mention worm, storm, aid, erosion, or any of a host of other everyday terms on the list. Still think the government is your friend?

I'm sure that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, has no interest in monitoring your communications, and that the government is collecting massive amounts of data on everyone's phone calls, emails, social media posts and what not for benevolent purposes. I'm sure that this list of search terms that DHS analysts are supposed to use is only intended to defend us against terrorists who hope to assault this country using snow, blizzards, and sleet, or maybe Crest toothpaste. On the other hand, maybe we should all just end all of our emails, Facebook posts, tweets and whatever else with "Yo, Clapper, blow me." Might overwhelm the system.

Sorry,  have to go. A couple guys in black suits and really dark sunglasses are at the door. Gotta go see what they want.

Let's remember why we need to spy on ourselves now

David Burge‏@iowahawkblog

Govt has to scrape all your phone calls and emails because govt forgot to enforce immigration law on 20 expired visas in 2001.

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6:30 AM - 8 Jun 13

See? I can agree with liberals

I can't believe I'm going to link to Mother Jones magazine, but that seems to be the case. Keep your eyes peeled for boiling seas, rivers running with blood, etc., etc.

Anyway, Mother Jones is reporting that

the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

It would appear that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee [truth alert -- they oversee the intelligence committee. It does not mean that the members of the committee are intelligent, although I wholeheartedly support Sen. Wyden, generally a screaming liberal, on this.]  has been bitching since 2011 about the feds spying on the American public. Wyden thought Americans were being spied on by their own government in an unlawful fashion, and he fought the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to get declassified a couple statements he wanted to release. The statements were:

* On at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

* I believe that the government's implementation of Section 702 of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion. 

So the situation is this: the government is collecting boatloads of data about the communications of ordinary citizens. A court found at least some of that activity to be unconstitutional. The government is fighting to keep that opinion classified so that the public will not know that some of what the government is doing to the public is unconstitutional. Meanwhile, the president says:

If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.

 No shit, Sherlock. We already don't trust you! These scandals with the IRS, the DOJ, and the White House itself over its lies about the Benghazi incident have undermined this administration's credibility to the point of nonexistence, and now Barry's position is "trust us"? Really? Because you need this information from millions of innocent American citizens to catch the occasional terrorist? Kind of like you need to frisk paraplegic grandmothers to keep would be terrorists off domestic flights? Why not, as Mark Steyn suggests, just pay attention to what's right in front of you? The Army and the FBI ignored Maj. Nidal Hasan, despite multiple warnings, right up until he was shooting up Fort Hood. Taking the phone records of American citizens didn't help there, did it?

As for Major Hasan, who needs surveillance? He put “Soldier of Allah” on his business card and gave a PowerPoint presentation to his military colleagues on what he’d like to do to infidels — and nobody said a word, lest they got tied up in sensitivity-training hell for six months.

If Barry still thinks America trusts its government, maybe he should look to Facebook. Hat tip to Instapundit for both of these:

The most transparent administration EV-AH can eat me

OK, so we learned on Wednesday from a British newspaper (because the American media is still too busy sucking Barrys' schwantz to go after this kind of stuff) that the "National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon" under a secret order granted to the FBI April 25 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The authority lasts for three months, ending on July 19. As The Guardian reports:

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

We are talking about the data on phone calls by roughly 120 million people. That's a whole lot of secret surveillance. Wish that was all of it:

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The Post reports that the program, apparently known as PRISM, relies upon the voluntary cooperation of various internet service providers.

The technology companies, whose cooperation is essential to PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley, according to the document. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted traffic of substantial intelligence interest during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

So pretty much every company involved in moving your shit around on the intertubes -- email, blogs, IMs, whatever -- is promptly shoveling that shit right over to the NSA so the federal government can get up in your Kool-Aid. And the Post -- really deep in the article, to ensure that most people don't read that far, states that "President Obama presided over exponential growth in a program that candidate Obama criticized." Ain't that the way of it? The other guy is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil for doing something, but once you get the chance to do the same thing, it's cool. Fuck that.

Basically, my view on the whole thing is that if the government is reading my emails, my blog, or whatever
is that if they don't like it, fuck 'em. Come and get some, y'all.