As the result of a Freedom of Information Act request, the US Government has released the list of words that will trigger the Department of Homeland Security to start monitoring your online contributions and conversations. The list is divided into sections by subject matter.
Figure 1. You can call it a thunderstorm, but under no circumstances should you call it “extreme weather”
I was greatly amused to find a section for words about “Weather” on the list, which contains the following terms.
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
Looks like WUWT is going to be front and center 24/7/365 at the Department of Homeland Security, no matter what we do …
Lest you think I’m making this up, the list of words is on page 23 of the “Analyst’s Binder“, which describes the situation for those doing the analysis …
w.
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Addendum by Anthony: I would add that Climate Progress, GRIST, Yale Environment Forum, DeSmog Blog, 350.org, and other “extreme weather = climate” alarmist websites also use these words, as does NOAA itself daily. Hopefully, they have DHS analysts capable of actually analyzing intent rather than relying on “tribal profiling”. – Anthony
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Did you know the word “ARGO” is also on the list? I wonder if the NSF is helping with “key words”?
“Lightening”? They must be monitoring tens of thousands of hairdressers’ websites.
Seriously, this is just another example of the ‘more data = better results’ fallacy. Firstly, it is physically impossible to process that much data in real time, if ever. Secondly, if the objective is to keep up to speed on local weather and disaster events, the way to do it is to develop and maintain a relatively short list of reliable sources and monitor them. It ain’t rocket science.
This is just another example of the “we need bigger computers and more money because that’s why we stuffed up last time” effect. Ironically, if anything it has the opposite of the desired outcome, because instead of staying plugged in to relatively few reliable sources, they are drowning in a sea of meaningless data.
We should encourage this and get them to add many thousands of additional words. When everything beeps an alarm, nothing beeps an alarm.
So I guess we cannot describe the weapon used to kill Trotsky in Mexico – an ICE axe.
PS What I never understood is how anyone in Mexico would bother owning an ice axe?
As true hackers tend to be a bit iconoclastic, I offer this long-time function from the Emacs text editor’s email method:
This section of the manual may be seen at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html#Mail-Amusements
cheers,
gary
Robert of Ottawa says:
May 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
==============
For margaritas of course.
gt
Real terrerrorists use pig latin.
Robert of Ottawa says:
May 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
“So I guess we cannot describe the weapon used to kill Trotsky in Mexico – an ICE axe.
PS What I never understood is how anyone in Mexico would bother owning an ice axe?”
Trotsky was living the fine life. An Ice Pick, used for making ice cubes for your cocktail in those days where you bought large chunks of ice from delivery services.
Ric Werme says:
May 29, 2012 at 11:12 am
Probably. You could also say “Thorm”, which I believe John Coleman used when he was a TV weatherman in Chicago.
Re “lightening” rather than “lightning”. I remember one evening at a co-worker’s house having coffee after dinner. He pulled out a jar of non-dairy creamer and offered:
“Would you like some White Lightening, or perhaps some Light Whitening?”
(It was funner at the time — different era)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/02/is-nsas-massive-new-spy-center-watching/
Not real surprising. The folks in Utah will tell you as well. There coming to get you. 🙂
@ur momisugly Jason Calley
“For any who might think I am crazy, just remember that I might think you are naive.”
You probably are crazy. That doesn’t mean you are wrong.
DirkH says:
May 29, 2012 at 6:46 pm
f u cn rd ths, y shd i lrn 2 spl?
So Depressing. No respect for fellow Americans. No trust. How guilt-ridden must they be, to fear others so much?
This is the new “no fly list” with a quota of words to get added every quarter to protect us all from something or someone. There is now an entire bureaucracy dedicated to analyzing words and adding them to the list. Soon we will all be on the no fly list and all words will be subject to suspicion.
Big brother is watching you. Big brother loves you.
EMACS! Now there is something I haven’t used in a decade. In case you are wondering what it stands for “Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping” back when 8 megabytes of RAM was a huge amount.
Gary Hladik says:
May 29, 2012 at 12:30 pm
!oN
Apologies if someone has already posted this one (have checked but not spotted) but my electronic Macquarie defines
lightening – the descent of the foetus into the pelvic cavity so that the head becomes engaged.
Well that is extreme weather
Wonder how long before we see a WordPress plug in which automatically converts text to image formate, to make monitoring and searching, harder?
richardscourtney says: .
I lived in Cheltenham for many years. Cheltenham is the base for GCHQ; i.e. the UK equivalent of the US NSA with whom it works in close agreement.
Please note that I have NOT worked with or for GCHQ at any time. However, GCHQ is the major employer in Cheltenham. And this makes the town culturally unique.
============================================================
Having worked for many years for a firm who worked very closely with the military and all of the “interesting” agencies on both sides of the pond, and who developed many of the technologies used by said agencies, we decided it would be a bit of fun to develop our own codewords – hence the establishment you refer to was the Cheltenam Ladies College. Not too far away, the hard men play at the Hereford YMCA, and of course there is the rather less well-known Milton Keynes B&Q.
This cannot be. It really cannot be that Homeland Security is going to start monitoring the online activities of everyone who refers to snow, ice and hail. It does not pass the most basic reasonableness test. Half the world refers to one of these every winter. I don’t understand how this story has come about, but it simply cannot be true. For one thing, the amount of material it would generate would be humongous.
The readers of WUWT are all comedians. Who knew?
Actually, this is nothing more than a bunch of keywords for checking news stories to prepare daily summaries for executives. If anyone had actually bothered to read the document, it would be quite apparent that these words were used to train someone what words to look for in published news reports and blogs. Since DHS contains FEMA as one of its agencies, it’s no surprise that FEMA executives, as well as main DHS executives, would want to read news stories involving potential weather related disasters.
“Don’t say that word!”
“What word?”
“I cannot tell. Suffice to say it is one of the words The Knights of Ni cannot hear!”
Y’know, if the US Government is run by Monty Python, that would explain A LOT.
wildfire in my loins;
my bride to my aid;
it burst;
Instant relief.
[snip. Too much religious fundamentalism for this science site. ~dbs, mod.]