Friday, August 5, 2011

So when they say they're monitoring those who 'advance violent extremist narratives...'

...Are they talking about al Qaeda or DHS?
DHS's National Operations Center "will monitor activities on the social-media sites" using search engines, aggregators, and other tools, last year's announcement said. "The NOC will gather, store, analyze, and disseminate relevant and appropriate de-identified information to federal, state, local, and foreign governments, and private sector partners..."

In addition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation unearthed documents showing that DHS officials were sending "friend" requests to people applying for U.S. citizenship. DHS conducted extensive monitoring of social networks during Obama's inauguration.

In 2009, CIA investment arm In-Q-Tel invested in Visible Technologies, which monitors millions of posts on social-networking Web sites, Wired reported. Tax collectors, too, are "nabbing scofflaws by mining information posted on social-networking Web sites," according to The Wall Street Journal, and the FBI has previously supported legislation that would allow federal police to monitor the Internet for "illegal activity."
'Cause, y'know, there are some entities right there who certainly demonstrate violence and extremism, and ought to be carefully monitored. You can tell'em from the way they go by three letters*. The way all assassins have three names.


*Yeah, I know. In my heart, it'll always be ATF.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hereby declare my violent opposition to all extremism as well as my extreme opposition to violence.

Buck.

Tam said...

Why give them the three letters they want so badly? It makes them feel like a real federal law enforcement agency when you do, like the FBI or DEA.

Oh, how it must've burned to get a fifth letter tacked onto their name in the post-9/11 shuffle.

Why do you think I always refer to them as the BATFEIEIO? ;)