Apparently the Department of Homeland (In)Security has been parsing internet communications including social media and presumably sites like DKos for an interesting set of "keywords". Yes, unsurprisingly the First Amendment doesn't mean much in light of the "War on Terra"™ courtesy of the paranoid idiots who brought us the DHS and the Patriot Act.
The MailOnline is reporting that the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information request to see the list of keywords that DHS "analysts" use to find suspicious activity on the internet. Yes, you too can be flagged for using words like "cloud", "initiative" and "Sick" in your Facebook or Twitter posts. The First Amendment? What the Fuck is that again? I'm sure that if you use your real name and enough of the keywords you probably end up on the "no-fly" list, I'm sure that's what that 18-month old baby did recently to get denied boarding...probably had some random posts up there about being "sick" of formula or tweeted that she was going to go flying in a "cloud".
Of course the DHS admits that perhaps their list is overkill (will that get me flagged?). Duh. Now that the list has been made public it will be interesting to see if it gets revised or even becomes obsolete (nah ga happen, the government never gets rid of shit like this). How in the world any attorney who works for the government could have thought that this was a good idea is beyond me, but then I remember that David Addington, Scooter Libby and others were government attorneys once and I answer my own question.
I think we should have a contest in the comments to write sentences that use as many of the keywords as possible...it'll make someone's life a misery if there are some harmless creative writing examples with those words in them. Serves the idiots right.