Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as 'attack', 'Al Qaeda', 'terrorism' and 'dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like 'pork', 'cloud', 'team' and 'Mexico'.
Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.
The words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder' used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'.
Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that 'reflect adversely' on the government.
However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.
As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.
The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center - a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.
In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as 'broad, vague and ambiguous'.
They point out that it includes 'vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.'
A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual 'is a starting point, not the endgame' in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.
However the agency admitted that the language used was vague and in need of updating.
Spokesman Matthew Chandler told website: 'To ensure clarity, as part of ... routine compliance review, DHS will review the language contained in all materials to clearly and accurately convey the parameters and intention of the program.' -
Homeland Security: A Complete Guide to Understanding, Preventing, and Surviving Terrorism
Introduction to Homeland Security, Fourth Edition: Principles of All-Hazards Risk Management
**********
Telepathic Bigfoot Research
Telepathic Bigfoot research is laughable to many Bigfoot researchers. They want to get solid scientific PROOF that Bigfoot exists and don’t see the connection to exploration of telepathy. There are many scientists specializing in the study of telepathy. Do you see the correlation there? The POSSIBILITIES?
There are many non-telepathic Bigfoot researchers on the job, trying to get that physical proof. The Bigfoot research scene resembles a huge tumble-jumble of people racing to be the one great almighty Bigfoot researcher with a gold star, who will go down in history as the discoverer of the Sasquatch species. Continue reading at Telepathic Bigfoot Research
**********
Naked man killed by Police near MacArthur Causeway was ‘eating’ face off victim
It was a scene as creepy as a Hannibal Lecter movie.
One man was shot to death by Miami police, and another man is fighting for his life after he was attacked, and his face allegedly half eaten, by a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp Saturday, police said.
The horror began about 2 p.m. when a series of gunshots were heard on the ramp, which is along NE 13th Street, just south of The Miami Herald building.
According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.
The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots.
Miami police were on the scene, which was just south of The Miami Herald building on Biscayne Boulevard. The naked man who was killed lay face down on the pedestrian walkway just below the newspaper’s two-story parking garage. Police have requested The Herald’s video surveillance tapes.
The other man was transported to the hospital with critical injuries, according to police. Their identities were not released.
The incident, which came as crowds descended upon South Beach for the annual Urban Beach Week hip-hop festival, snarled traffic on the causeway for several hours.
In a text message, Javier Ortiz, spokesman for Miami police’s Fraternal Order of Police, said the officer who fired the fatal shots was “a hero.”
“Based on the information provided, our Miami police officer is a hero and saved a life,’’ he said.
Sergeant Altarr Williams, supervisor of Miami police’s Homicide Unit, said a man doesn’t have to be armed to be dangerous.
“There are other ways to injure people,’’ Williams said. “Some people know martial arts, others are very strong and can kill you with their hands.’’
Investigators believe the victim may have been homeless and laying down when the crazed man pounced.
Police theorize the attacker might have been suffering from "cocaine psychosis," a drug-induced craze that bakes the body internally and often leads the affected to strip naked to try and cool off.
Miami Herald writers Alexandra Leon and Curtis Morgan contributed to this report. - miamiherald
Thanks to Bill for the heads up!
An Intellectual History of Cannibalism
Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America
**********
Boy finds decades-old photo of dead uncle inside camera at yard sale
When Addison Logan, 13, saw an old Polaroid camera at a Wichita, Kan., garage sale and thought it looked like a fun relic little did he know it carried a photograph of a dead uncle he never met.
Deciding the camera was "pretty cool" and worth the $1 asking price, he headed home with his grandmother, Lois Logan, and searched the internet to find out how it worked, The Wichita Eagle reported.
When he opened the camera, there was a photograph inside. He showed his grandmother, who was shocked to see her son, Scott, who died 23 years earlier in a car accident.
The photo showed Scott with a high school girlfriend about 10 years before he died. For Lois, it was proof he was still looking down on the family.
Addison's father, Blake, said of the picture, "I'm just shocked. The more time that passes, the more in disbelief I am ... It's almost like he's reaching out to us, saying he's still with us."
The Logan family don't know the family that sold the camera, and the house that held the garage sale didn't exist in the 1970s when the picture was taken, ruling out the chance the camera belonged to the girlfriend pictured with Scott and had been left there.
The family is happy to accept the random nature of the find, with another of Scott's brothers, Jeff, saying, "When you get something like that, that's almost like a sign telling us, 'Hey, everything's all right, I'm still here.'" - foxnews
Thanks to Sharolyn for the heads up!
**********
Do UFO Hunters Still Report “Men in Black” Sightings?
This weekend, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones will attempt to conquer the box office yet again with the third installment of the Men in Black franchise. The films, centered on a secret group of dark-suited agents responsible for keeping alien life from the eyes of the public, are based on Lowell Cunningham’s comic book series of the same name. That comic book series was in turn inspired by actual reports of clandestine, black-clad figures, reports that date back several decades and are an integral part of UFO folklore.
The producers of Men in Black III are even attempting to cash in on that folklore through a viral marketing campaign that mimics “men in black” accounts of old. Cheap-looking billboards (which don’t mention the movie at all) declare that “The Men in Black Suits are Real” and direct the curious to call a hotline, which then encourages them to leave a message detailing their own supernatural experiences. (There is also, of course, a blog that further exploits MIB culture in the hopes of a box office bonanza.)
This got us thinking: Given the enormous commercial success of the Men in Black films—as well as the popularity of TV’s The X-Files, which also drew on “men in black” mythology—do UFO seekers still report such sightings? Or has the mainstreaming of this phenomenon rooted it out of the UFO subculture that produced it?
First, a little background. In the summer of 1947, the sighting of “nine shiny discs” by a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold inspired similar accounts around the globe, as eminent ufologist Jerome Clark explains in his detailed book, The UFO Encyclopedia. (The Arnold sighting led to the coining of a new term: “flying saucers.”) That same summer, Harold Dahl claimed to have been visited by a man in a dark suit who promised to harm him if he disclosed his sighting of unidentified flying objects around Tacoma, Wash., the previous day. Dubbed the “Maury Island Mystery,” the incident was later investigated by the Air Force, and is widely regarded as a hoax. But the image took hold in the popular imagination, and accounts of men in dark suits who have some connection to UFOs proliferated.
The most famous such account came from Albert K. Bender, who, in 1952, created the International Flying Saucer Bureau. Soon afterward, he said, he was visited by three men in dark suits who threatened him with imprisonment if he continued his inquiries into UFOs. Bender’s account was featured in They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, a book by IFSB associate Gray Barker, who also mentioned it frequently in his magazine, The Saucerian.
Bender believed that the men who threatened him were part of the U.S. government, but explanations for the men in black vary. And a distinction is made, in UFO literature, between “men in black” and “Men in Black” (note the capital letters). The former are believed to be human agents who cover up government secrets and are said to appear relatively normal. The latter (often abbreviated as MIBs) were described by the late ufologist John A. Keel—author of book-turned-film The Mothman Prophecies—as “demonic supernaturals” who behave in distinctly nonhuman ways. (Keel’s accounts of MIBs, which date to the mid-1960s, have xenophobic overtones: He describes them as having dark skin and/or “exotic” facial features. The first Men in Black movie cleverly inverted this aspect of MIB folklore, depicting aliens as immigrants.)
I asked Clark, an active board member of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), whether the popularization of the MIB has affected the number of visits reported today. Such accounts have tapered significantly in the 15 years since the original MIB was released, he said, but he does not believe the films are responsible. Why the decline, then? Clark didn’t offer a specific reason, but he did suggest that few ufologists pay attention to such matters anymore, particularly since Keel passed away in 2009.
British ufologist Nick Redfern, on the other hand, disputes the notion that sightings have declined. In his book The Real Men in Black, he tells of several reported visits in recent years.
Whether or not the sightings have continued or will continue, Clark cautions against dismissing such stories as the ramblings of crazy people—or to think of them as literal events, like bumping into someone at the grocery store. Rather, Clark said, the direct observation and the event must be separated. Accounts of the men in black represent experiences that, in his words, “don’t seem to have occurred in the world of consensus reality.” - slaye
The Real Men In Black: Evidence, Famous Cases, and True Stories of These Mysterious Men and their Connection to UFO Phenomena
Mystery of the Men in Black: The UFO Silencers
