Big Brother Watches The Weather
By Jason Pelletier on May 31, 2012, 12:10pm
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We all probably know by now that the government monitors everyone's activity on the internet. Typing in keywords such as "nuclear weapons" or "terrorist" would most certainly place you on their watch list, but did you know that by typing in seemingly everyday weather terms like "ice" or "storm" will get you placed on the Department of Homeland Security's watch list?
Thanks to a Freedom of Information request, the Department of Homeland Security posted the 2011 Analyst Desktop Binder which the department's security analysts use as their instructional manual. This manual lists all the words separated into 9 different categories and includes the one category that we here at WXedge.com would be concerned with: Weather/Disaster/Emergency. Every word in this category is one that we use on this site daily. Luckily each posting or search is monitored for genuine security threats and given threat level from 1-5, 1 being an urgent situation while 5 is listed as "Validate" and comes mostly from news or print organizations such as this site.
The following picture comes directly from the Analyst Desktop Binder and is the list of words that are monitored from the Weather/Disaster/Emergency category. For sake of saving me from being eyed a little closer I'll just post a picture of the keywords instead of typing each one out individually. Be sure to check out the rest of the Desktop Binder for all the keywords and search terms that are monitored.
Like I said before, these words are monitored to weed out genuine security threats. For those are really paranoid about stuff like this, you should probably refrain from using too many of these terms at one time in your internet postings or searches.
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