Homeland Security to track bloggers and journalists
You gotta have your KGB: Homeland Security has revealed that it is putting together a program to track bloggers, journalists, and what it calls “Social Media Influencers.”
[T]he Department of Homeland Security has just announced that it intends to compile a comprehensive list of hundreds of thousands of “journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.”, and collect any “information that could be relevant” about them.
So if you have a website, an important blog or you are just very active on social media, the Department of Homeland Security is going to put you on a list and will start collecting information about you. The DHS has already announced that it will hire a contractor to aid in monitoring media coverage, and they will definitely need plenty of help because it is going to be a very big job…
The article above then quotes from another news story describing this Orwellian plan:
As part of its “media monitoring,” the DHS seeks to track more than 290,000 global news sources as well as social media in over 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, for instant translation into English. The successful contracting company will have “24/7 access to a password protected, media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.” in order to “identify any and all media coverage related to the Department of Homeland Security or a particular event.”
This is quite vile, but no surprise. From its very inception after 9/11 Homeland Security was designed to violate numerous rights listed in the Bill of Rights. We are now seeing those violations play out. Worse should certainly be expected as well.
I hope they track Behind the Black. If they try to squelch me the publicity might do the site good.
Meanwhile, where is Trump in this? That this program is going forward under his watch illustrates once again that Trump really is not that much different than the swamp in Washington he claims a desire to drain. He has undeniably forced a lot of positive change in DC, but his lack of understanding of the philosophical battle allows him to permit this kind of abuse. This program centers power in the executive branch, something that Trump doesn’t really mind.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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P.O.Box 1262
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
You gotta have your KGB: Homeland Security has revealed that it is putting together a program to track bloggers, journalists, and what it calls “Social Media Influencers.”
[T]he Department of Homeland Security has just announced that it intends to compile a comprehensive list of hundreds of thousands of “journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.”, and collect any “information that could be relevant” about them.
So if you have a website, an important blog or you are just very active on social media, the Department of Homeland Security is going to put you on a list and will start collecting information about you. The DHS has already announced that it will hire a contractor to aid in monitoring media coverage, and they will definitely need plenty of help because it is going to be a very big job…
The article above then quotes from another news story describing this Orwellian plan:
As part of its “media monitoring,” the DHS seeks to track more than 290,000 global news sources as well as social media in over 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, for instant translation into English. The successful contracting company will have “24/7 access to a password protected, media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.” in order to “identify any and all media coverage related to the Department of Homeland Security or a particular event.”
This is quite vile, but no surprise. From its very inception after 9/11 Homeland Security was designed to violate numerous rights listed in the Bill of Rights. We are now seeing those violations play out. Worse should certainly be expected as well.
I hope they track Behind the Black. If they try to squelch me the publicity might do the site good.
Meanwhile, where is Trump in this? That this program is going forward under his watch illustrates once again that Trump really is not that much different than the swamp in Washington he claims a desire to drain. He has undeniably forced a lot of positive change in DC, but his lack of understanding of the philosophical battle allows him to permit this kind of abuse. This program centers power in the executive branch, something that Trump doesn’t really mind.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
And where does the Department Of Homeland Security germinate from?
911
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security
Was waiting in a draw already written, just waiting for the event with which to enact it.
Duh, think about it, how do you get something like the Patriot Act and Homeland Security into operation, whole heartedly embraced by the public in order to make things “Safe” ? (Gotta scare the hell out of them if your going to build the future that YOU determine MUST be built)
S. O. M. Are we catching on now?
“Meanwhile, where is Trump in this? That this program is going forward under his watch illustrates once again that Trump really is not that much different than the swamp in Washington he claims a desire to drain.”
Only so many hours in the day. Watching every one of the federales, from the WH, is impossible. That is why the swamp needs draining, …to make it small enough that this sort of thing is regularly seen and squashed. The real problem is that the task of drain, drain, drain, will take about 24 years, even at the rates that already have progs squealing like stuck pigs! At the end of the second 8-year presidency that makes progress at present rates, *then* you could hope for attention from the President on things like this.
identify any and all media coverage related to the Department of Homeland Security or a particular event.”
This part sounds reasonable but as we have seen with the FBI, NSA, and CIA an unethical President or career employees can abuse a system and not be held accountable.
It seems that this is something that could be done in real time during an event with a search engine and monitoring the major social media sites for trending topics or keywords.
to make it small enough that this sort of thing is regularly seen and squashed.
Pretty much the way to deal with a lot of problems. Don’t like “dark money” in elections? Then shrink the size or the budget so less groups are competing for a piece of it. Don’t like corporations speaking out? Then stop using punative regulations to target them. People, and groups of people, have a right to speak out about what our government is doing. In order to get less people speaking, you have to reduce the impact of government in their lives. But our friends to the left want the big government without the freedom of speech to talk about it.
Its a bit like price controls or saying health care costs will go down because an individual gets a subsidy from the government. Its all smoke and mirrors to avoid solving problems and that actually make those problems worse over the long term.
We must fight to save the Fatherland, I mean Motherland. No I’m still wrong, it’s Homeland but the concept is the same.
wodun wrote: “as we have seen with the FBI, NSA, and CIA an unethical President or career employees can abuse a system and not be held accountable.”
This is why DHS believes that it can successfully get into the act of influencing future elections — even if only by intimidation. The IRS, FBI, DoJ, and several intelligence agencies pulled it off under Obama, and now under Trump they have not been punished for past misdeeds. The swamp is spreading like a cancer in a once-free nation.
Welcome to Obama’s America, land of the formerly free.
Nah, The bureaucrats will spend all day following half-naked Instagram models on the Government’s dime. Won’t have any time for doing real oppression!
SOCIAL MEDIA IS BECOMING A THREAT TO EVERYONE’S FREEDOM
Social media, which would include any publicly accessible internet platform in the form of a corporate entity that facilitates mass communication between the public who is self tasked with the policing of the words and terminology that the public is allowed to use on their platform may represent the biggest threat to freedom and free speech in America and the world to date.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/facebook-takes-action-against-users-for-calling-accused-cop-killer-illegal-immigrant-illegal-alien
In my opinion the only problem that a corporate overseer of content might have with these Facebook posts is that the word “Alleged” needed to be used in conjunction with he word “Murderer” in describing the alleged murder of police officer Singh. While the assumption of innocence must be assumed until proven in a court of law, officer Singh is still dead and the alleged perpetrator is still an illegal entrant into OUR country. These facts are irrefutable no matter how you play with the semantics of words and terms. It does not change the facts one bit.
These corporate entities which are self admittedly Left in their political philosophy, to say the least, represent a decidedly extreme threat to every Americans ability to communicate in the manner that they please by applying THEIR politically correct standards to all communication on their platform. And while I do not think this an easy job when you sit down and think about it, there appears to me to be a clear and indisputable Left leaning politically correct bias that is default loaded into these corporate decisions about what acceptable speech is and what it is not. Its perfectly understandable based on who is doing the editing but it must be somehow more objective and neutral instead of politically biased, and I do not see that happening without some kind of outside guidance or standards being introduced to these now ubiquitous communication entities.
Con Edison, a ubiquitous utility, sells power and access to power based on established rates and not based on party affiliation or speech content. And while power is not speech, speech, free speech specifically, can be very powerful. And those who seek to throttle speech to their own ends need to see the need for everyone’s interests in everyone’s free speech as primary and not a second thought.
MAGA
The other end of the spectrum:
https://youtu.be/Dkw15LkZ_Kw
Everyone is a child and the state is their mother and father, everything is beautiful in the day light. However you may disappear in the dark of the night if you become an issue.