Wait, You Mean Homeland Security Isn't Already Scanning Blogs & Forums For Terrorists?

from the uh,-yikes? dept

Wed, Dec 24th 2008 4:10am — Mike Masnick

USA Today is reporting that Homeland Security is looking to start scanning blogs, forums and message boards to try to track terrorists and terrorist activity. My first reaction to this, honestly, was shock. Shouldn't they have been doing this already? As in, for many, many years? To be fair, the article suggests that the real difference here is that in the past Homeland Security has done static searches that they check on every so often -- and now they're hoping for a more real-time solution. Even so, it strikes me as odd that Homeland Security didn't already have something that was at least close to real-time in alerting them to certain things online. For all the talk of sophisticated monitoring on internet activities, could it be that we're really that far behind in internet terrorist monitoring?

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Filed Under: blogs, comments, forums, homeland security, monitoring, terrorists

23 Comments

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ryan, 24 Dec 2008 @ 5:19am

Considering everything else that the government is behind on, this would be fitting.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Dec 2008 @ 5:33am

They could have been doing it in real-time for a while, but maybe now there just announcing it.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Dec 2008 @ 5:38am

i find that hard to believe, that or every one in the word gives the US (government) too much credit.

no offense intended any one
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- jonnyq, 24 Dec 2008 @ 6:44am
  
  Re:
  People give the government too much credit. People have seen movies about how the government can know anything in an instant and they believe that's how it really works.
  
  I know the government has admitting to data mining and the excuse is that the data is so large it's almost useless for anything except mining for certain bits of information. I don't like that - not because I really thing they're spying on things I do, but because they shouldn't have the information.
  
  No it doesn't surprise me that the government hasn't been savvy enough to check Google more often, but it is a little surprising they haven't tried to create their own web crawler.
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Anthony, 24 Dec 2008 @ 5:40am

Until now they have been diligently surveiling America's bank teller drive thru's because the tubes are clear so they can see any threats easily. We all know that the internet is a series of tubes...
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Michael Lockyear, 24 Dec 2008 @ 5:45am

2 words...
Google Alerts!
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Haywood, 24 Dec 2008 @ 5:56am

My favorite hangout might be watched
It is really just a bunch of aging yuppies trying to out do each other in cars, guns and women, frequently posting pictures of all of that. After a while of hanging there, it is just normal, but a gung-ho agent stumbling into it could misread the content, especially the guns.
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Ben, 24 Dec 2008 @ 6:33am

They have been
They've been using private companies to do the fancy stuff for them.
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Lonnie E. Holder, 24 Dec 2008 @ 6:40am

Maybe they suspect bingo parlors...
Homeland Security is really a bunch of gung-ho kids who assumed that no one would ever use the internet to plot terrorist activities because everyone is assuming that someone is monitoring the internet...it would be too obvious, yes?
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 Dec 2008 @ 6:43am
  
  Re: Maybe they suspect bingo parlors...
  that's too much conspiracy for me i guess ill sign out for the day
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Bit Golem, 24 Dec 2008 @ 6:55am

The new Communism
Department of Homeland Security reminds me of Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Basopasnosti, or Committee for Government Security, our old buddies the KGB.
The whole lie that the US is at risk of terrorist attack is a tool to keep Americans focus away from the real issues we face. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Government needed a new enemy. They tried drugs, but noone cared, so they created global terrorism.
Ask the Israelis, the Lebanese, the British... There is NO WAY to stop urban terrorism. If we were really at risk, shit would be happening every day in this country the way it is all over the world.
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Vincent Clement, 24 Dec 2008 @ 8:57am

Security Theatres Becomes Reality
On January 6, 2009, security theatre will go big time with it's own TV show, Homeland Security USA. Aye carumba.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 Dec 2008 @ 11:52am
  
  Re: Security Theatres Becomes Reality
  It'll be like COPS! except that the people on camera will have no idea what they've done or what this man is beating them senseless.
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Martin Edic (Techrigy), 24 Dec 2008 @ 9:24am

As someone whose company provides social media monitoring I'm not surprised that they are not deeply involved. These guys have too much on their plates and there is still a long way to go before the understanding of social media's value sinks in. With the new administration I think we'll see a change as they are much more tech-savvy.
And BTW, Google Alerts is a very limited tool that doesn't pick up 95% of the conversations across the full range of social media sources.
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weneedhelp, 24 Dec 2008 @ 10:33am

The NSA's Secret Spy Room at AT&T
Dont kid yourselves, they have been collecting ALL phone/Internet traffic for years. Follow the link in my username.
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weneedhelp, 24 Dec 2008 @ 10:34am

EFF Press Conference After NSA Wiretapping Court Hearing
Dont kid yourselves, they have been collecting ALL phone/Internet traffic for years. Follow the link in my username. 2009 WILL BE 1984.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Dec 2008 @ 11:26am

Really?
This is rich!

I don't know how many posts I have seen on Techdirt complaining about all the nasty spying the govt. has been doing.

And now complaining that the govt. is not spying on the Internet.

P.S. No doubt a post will appear in 2009 complaining that the govt. is spying on the Internet!
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- Dave, 24 Dec 2008 @ 11:53am
  
  Re: Really?
  Not complaining, just surprised.
  
  Don't you have a bridge to hide under?
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don, 24 Dec 2008 @ 9:33pm

how many is "many, many years"?
Let's see, it's been 7 years since 9/11/2001. That to me is a "few" years. It's certainly not "many, many years" - 100 years might be "many, many years."
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Dec 2008 @ 7:48am

Re: Re: Really?
Complaining: [ trans. ] express dissatisfaction or annoyance about a state of affairs or an event.

So tell me what is this: "Shouldn't they have been doing this already? As in, for many, many years?"

And I used to live under that bridge in Minneapolis, but I had to move. Now living under the Bridge to Nowhere....
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- Anthony, 25 Dec 2008 @ 9:15am
  
  Re: Re: Re: Really?
  Well you had better not try to live under a bridge in Des Moines. Mayor and city council just tore down all their shanties by the river citing fire hazards due to one wood stove accident in a decade.
  
  Now they are freezing to death. GG.
  
  At any rate Homeland is watching chat rooms and things but not just for terrorists, they look for pedos and any other kind of cyber crime. They need to focus IMO or get out of the game and quit wasting our time and money. Not that stopping pedos isn't a noble pursuit but we already have the FBI for that and like someone said above, you can't really stop urban terrorism so if you're going to spend money and time trying you had better make damn sure it's the only thing you're focused on.
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Adolf von Wurttemberg, 26 Dec 2008 @ 9:13am

Chertoff and his goon squard
Homeland Security ("sic") cannot do anything correctly. Why, just look at the (low-tech) New Orleans fiasco! These incompetent fools cannot do anything w/o screwing up and high tech is just totally beyond them. May they wallow and die in their stupidity. That will indeed happen because of the kind of "government" pseudo-mentalities (i.e. 'warm bodies') whom they hire. Why, just imagine these morons monitoring our e-mail. Gross incompetence!
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pughmeister, 28 Dec 2008 @ 7:09am

It's all in the clouds
This is only the beginning of something that began long ago. Data mining is alive and well in the Google -Amazon Cloud, This is where we are going right? Cloud computing and data mining, through social networks?
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