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.