List of Words Homeland Security Tracks on Facebook and Twitter

Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
All Gov
March 5, 2012

If not getting enough attention in your life is a problem, there’s one surefire way to get the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to notice you: Use any of its proscribed watch words on social media sites.

According to a DHS document, the agency is maintaining a lengthy list of “Items of Interest”—in other words, words. The words are categorized by subject, such as those falling under “Domestic Security,” “Southwest Border Violence,” “Health Concern + H1N1,” “Terrorism” and more.

Besides the obvious ones like “Al Qaeda (all spellings),” “weapons cache,” “meth lab” and “jihad,” the words being monitored on Facebook and Twitter include:

·       airport
·       sick
·       gas
·       cloud
·       mud slide or mudslide
·       canceled
·       interstate
·       recovery
·       home grown
·       marijuana
·       incident
·       police
·       infection
·       symptoms
·       North Korea
·       China
·       Tucson
·       San Diego
·       pork
·       help
and, of course,
·       social media

To Learn More:
The Department of Homeland Security Is Searching Your Facebook and Twitter for These Words (by Joel Johnson, Animal New York)
Analyst’s Desktop Binder (Department of Homeland Security) (pdf)

This article was posted: Monday, March 5, 2012 at 1:56 pm

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