The Devil Is In The Details: DHS Monitoring Web & "Wrong" Words

DHS will monitor more U.S. citizens on the Internet, the feds may have the power to pull the plug on the Web, and certain words automatically incriminate you if used in emails. It's been a busy week, eroding away at privacy. The devil in the details of ce
Network World
Jun. 26, 2010

Cyber-terrorists and the dreaded cyberwar have escalated to the point of the "feds" pulling the plug on the Internet in case of an emergency. Then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that in the future there will be "increased" Internet monitoring of U.S. citizens due to the dangers of homegrown terrorism. Napolitano remarked on how "wrong" it is to believe that if "security" is embraced, that liberty will be sacrificed.

I'm not saying that we don't need security because we do. To say it will not impact liberty or privacy is naive, a "big mistake," and I "strongly disagree."

Blaming the Internet for terrorism is like blaming money for corruption or blaming guns for murders; it's "dumb." Not all people who have money are corrupt and not all who have guns are murderers. Not all of us on the Internet are terrorists. No amount of monitoring, regulating, or censoring will change the behavior of people who wield those things for evil.

You may be wondering why some italicized words are in quotation marks. They are search terms that attorneys investigating Lehman Brothers had used to dig through 34 million pages of documents. Use those words paired with others listed in the examiner's report from pages 158 - 284 and you could be busted for incriminating correspondence. It's a "significantly" long list.

Land on a "bad" page or add the "wrong" words in an "email" and Tag, you're it! How far are we from being put on a watch list or arrested to voice a "concern" or to "discuss" that our government is becoming the biggest privacy threat to hit America?

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