Proof: Department of Homeland Security Monitoring News for End Times

Back in January, we made the outrageous claim that the Department of Homeland Security essentially admitted they were monitoring our website when it was revealed they were monitoring and recording social media for the topics we cover.

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act, we now have internal Department of Homeland Security documents that detail the keywords and types of activity that warrant surveillance and scrutiny by government public safety officials.

To be clear, it’s not the DHS themselves but rather a well-compensated government contractor plumbing the public data to give real-time insight into whatever we’re supposed to be scared of today. We’re guilty of using about half the words on the list in the last few months alone. We here at News for End Times take the documents as definitive proof that our coverage of Eco Terrorism Suspicious Package/Device Viral Hemorrhagic (come on, who is going to spell that out?) Fever Drug Cartel Maritime Domain Awareness Brush Fire (brush fire? really?) is being tracked.

Any student of journalism knows about the chilling effect, which essentially is a discouragement to talk about something by threatening legal action, even though talking about it would be protected under First Amendment rights. We see this happening today, for example, with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) trying to chill speech of a whistleblower who proved one billion dollars worth of scanners are worthless and easily defeated. It’s happening now around the blogosphere as we scratch our heads wondering how the hell this is supposed to help our security.

It begs the question: “What’s worse, corporations tracking your online behavior for their own profit, or government contractors invading your privacy to protect against some largely imagined terrorist threat.” Data mining on social networks is much like the other billions spent in vein by wasteful government efforts to project a false sense of security. They ought to just take their multimillion-dollar budget and buy us some emergency food and water supplies.

We are disappointed, but not surprised, that members of our federal government believe that surveilling the public data of the Internet will surface credible threats to the integrity of our nation. If such were true, they would have caught Kim Kardashian a long time ago.

Homeland Security Admits to Monitoring News For End Times

We’re not right-wing, left-wing or hot wings, we’re independent thinkers and unaffiliated political agents. But discussion of topics like nuclear weapons development and secret black ops programs have landed us on their watch list. How do we know? They admitted it!

The right-wing and Big Brother-wary breaking news giant Drudge Report is going out of its way to let the world know what social networks are being monitored and archived by Homeland Security. All public information posted to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter is being combed through and archived for future searches by the Federal government. This is something we’ve kind of known all along, but bringing this news to light in front of a huge audience is raising public awareness.

Drudge Report and Huffington Post were among those sites cited as being closely watched. Also on the list are various video and photo-sharing sites, including Hulu, Youtube and Flickr. Controversial sites like WikiLeaks and Cryptome were not surprising to see as well. Though News for End Times was not specifically listed in the report, (1) we’re small and we’re new and (2) there’s no way we’re not popping up on Homeland Security’s radar given the constant public sharing of this site’s content. In fact, one of our primary sources — Wired’s Danger Room blog — are right there on the list, so while we might be a small fry in the Fed’s eye compared to Wired, our topical coverage guarantees us a more prominent place in Homeland Security’s database.

My fear is not that the government will think News for End Times itself is some sort of threat. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear we’re trying to help people understand the threats they face so they can be better prepared to deal with them. My fear is that this will become another Red Scare scenario where anyone even talking about terrorism or huminatural threats (like hydrofracking) has pressure put on them to stop, which will chill free speech like it did back in the day. With draconian Internet censorship measures like SOPA and PIPA trying to steamroll the First Amendment, it certainly looks like the Fed is going in that direction.