Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

May 8, 2014

Hello, NSA

Filed under: Cybersecurity,Humor,NSA,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 11:05 am

Hello, NSA

Motherboard has a web app that generates random sentences laced with words of interest to the NSA. I saw this in Researchers find post-Snowden chill stifling our search terms by Lisa Vaas at nakedsecurity.

The about page for the app reads:

Turns out Uncle Sam is more of a peeping Tom than we even thought.

Now we know that the US government keeps our personal phone records, and can in certain cases access our emails, status updates, photos, and other personal information. We’re still not exactly sure how they sift through all this data.

But last year, the Department of Homeland Security released a list of over 370 keywords that served as trip-wires amidst the flow of conversation that pours through social media.

The operation—which is just one of an untold number of government programs keeping tabs on our tabs—flagged a variety of hot terms related to terrorism (dirty bomb), cyber security (Mysql injection), infrastructure (bridge, airport), health (pandemic), places (Mexico), and political dissent (radical), as well as more banal verbiage like ‘pork’ and ‘exercise.’

So let’s play a word game! Use our handy phrase generator to come up with pearls of keyword-loaded Twitter wit and perhaps earn you a new follower in Washington. Tweet it out, email it to a friend, share it around, you know the drill—and remember that the NSA and other government agencies might be reading along. And don’t forget to say hello.

Read more about government surveillance programs:

How to Build a Secret Facebook

The Motherboard Guide to Avoiding the NSA

Privacy’s Public, Government-Sponsored Death

A Majority of Americans Believe NSA Phone Tracking Is Acceptable

‘Going Dark’: What’s So Wrong with the FBI’s Plan to Tap Our Internet?

All the PRISM Data the Tech Giants Have Been Allowed to Disclose So Far

Sorry, NSA, Terrorists Don’t Use Verizon. Or Skype. Or Gmail

Please make Hello, NSA your browser homepage and forward that link to friends as a pubic service announcement.

Finding subjects is hard enough with “normal” levels of semantic noise. Help validate the $billions being spent scooping and searching the Internet. Turn the semantic noise knob up a bit.

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