366 Homeland Security Words
The Electronic Privacy Information Center posted a copy of a document titled “Department of Homeland Security, National Operations Center, Media Monitoring Capablity, Desktop Reference Binder” (or MMCDRB for short).
The headline of the EPIC story: EPIC Obtains New Documents on DHS Media Monitoring, Urges Congress to Suspend Program
The reaction to the “desktop reference binder” included such monochromatic headlines as:
Words to get your website on a government watch list – Social media monitoring!
Homeland Security has its eye on your Metro tweets, D.C. riders
The Department of Homeland Security Is Spying On Your Social Media Updates
Why is the government monitoring social media networks?
The DHS surveillance of OccupyWallStreet (Ok, different, but related.)
DHS Monitoring Of Social Media Under Scrutiny By Lawmakers
The Department Of Homeland Security Is Searching Your Facebook And Twitter For These Words
There is a lot that can be written about this manual and the complex issues illustrated by almost every section of the 40 page document. But that’s not what I want to write about. I want to write briefly about the search terms in the manual.
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One can always get a good 50 minute discussion going in a graduate seminar by asking “What is Homeland Security?”
The question can be addressed through a variety of inquiring systems (meaning ways of gathering and processing information about a question):
- Deductively – by starting from general principles
- Dialectically — focusing on the conflicts in homeland security
- Abductively — basically hunches and guesses
- Idealistically – Including ideas from as many perspectives as possible
- Pragmatically — an open systems, do-whatever-works approach
- or Detour and Access — beating around the bush, gaining access to homeland security by detouring around messy issues
No doubt there are other inquiring systems. Let me mention one more.
One unintended, albeit minor, consequence of the MMCDRB is to assist with an inductive answer to the what is homeland security question.
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Induction is about generating abstractions by aggregating specific instances. If deductive inquiry starts with principles and moves to data. Inductive inquiry starts with data and moves to principles, or at least propositions.
Without getting into the many (serious) problems of inductive inquiry, one can take the current list of “key words and search terms” in the MMCDRB, mix up the pieces — in this case alphabetically — and get a snapshot of how broad homeland security has become in the last decade.
Try it for yourself. There’s a story, a controversy, a fear, a mission or a budget in every word.
Key Words and Search Terms
1. 2600 2. Abu Sayyaf 3. Afghanistan 4. Agent 5. Agriculture 6. Agro 7. Agro Terror 8. Aid 9. Air Marshal 10. Airplane (and derivatives) 11. Airport 12. Al Queda (all spellings) 13. Al-Shabaab 14. Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) 15. Ammonium nitrate 16. AMTRAK 17. Anthrax 18. Antiviral 19. AQAP (Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) 20. AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) 21. Arellano-Felix 22. Artistics Assassins 23. Assassination 24. Attack 25. Authorities 26. Avalanche 27. Avian 28. Bacteria 29. Barrio Azteca 30. BART 31. Basque Separatists 32. Beltran-Leyva 33. Biological 34. Biological infection (or event) 35. Biological weapon 36. Black out 37. Blister agent 38. Blizzard 39. Body scanner 40. Bomb (squad or threat) 41. Border 42. Border Patrol 43. Botnet 44. Breach 45. Bridge 46. Brown out 47. Brush fire 48. Brute forcing 49. Burn 50. Burst 51. Bust 52. Cain and abel 53. Calderon 54. Canceled 55. Car bomb 56. Cartel 57. Cartel de Golfo 58. Center for Disease Control (CDC) 59. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 60. Chemical 61. Chemical burn 62. Chemical fire 63. Chemical Spill 64. Chemical weapon 65. China 66. CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources) 67. Ciudad Juarez 68. Closure 69. Cloud 70. Coast Guard (USCG) 71. Cocaine 72. Collapse 73. Colombia 74. Communications infrastructure 75. Computer infrastructure 76. Conficker 77. Consular 78. Contamination 79. Conventional weapon 80. Cops 81. Crash 82. Crest 83. Critical infrastructure 84. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) 85. Cyber attack 86. Cyber Command 87. Cyber security 88. Cyber terror 89. DDOS (dedicated denial of service) 90. Deaths 91. Decapitated 92. Delays 93. Denial of service 94. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 95. Dirty bomb 96. Disaster 97. Disaster assistance 98. Disaster management 99. Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) 100. DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office) 101. Dock 102. Domestic nuclear detection 103. Domestic security 104. Drill 105. Drug 106. Drug Administration (FDA) 107. Drug cartel 108. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) 109. Drug trade 110. Drug war 111. E. Coli 112. Earthquake 113. Ebola 114. Eco terrorism 115. El Paso 116. Electric 117. Emergency 118. Emergency Broadcast System 119. Emergency Landing 120. Emergency management 121. Emergency response 122. Enriched 123. Environmental terrorist 124. Epidemic 125. Erosion 126. ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) 127. Evacuation 128. Execution 129. Exercise 130. Explosion (explosive) 131. Exposure 132. Extreme weather 133. Extremism 134. Facility 135. Failure or outage 136. FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia) 137. Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) 138. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 139. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 140. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 141. First responder 142. Flood 143. Flu 144. Food Poisoning 145. Foot and Mouth (FMD) 146. Forest fire 147. Fort Hancock 148. Fundamentalism 149. Fusion Center 150. Gang 151. Gangs 152. Gas 153. Grid 154. Gulf Cartel 155. Gunfight 156. Guzman 157. H1N1 158. H5N1 159. Hacker 160. Hail 161. Hamas 162. Hazardous 163. Hazardous material incident 164. Hazmat 165. Help 166. Heroin 167. Hezbollah 168. Home grown 169. Homeland Defense 170. Homeland security 171. Hostage 172. Human to ANIMAL 173. Human to human 174. Hurricane 175. Ice 176. IED (Improvised Explosive Device) 177. Illegal immigrants 178. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) 179. Improvised explosive device 180. Incident 181. Industrial spill 182. Infection 183. Influenza 184. Infrastructure security 185. Interstate 186. IRA (Irish Republican Army) 187. Iran 188. Iraq 189. Islamist 190. Jihad 191. Juarez 192. Keylogger 193. Kidnap 194. La Familia 195. Law enforcement 196. Leak 197. Lightening 198. Listeria 199. Lockdown 200. Looting 201. Los Zetas 202. Magnitude 203. Malware 204. Mara salvatrucha 205. Marijuana 206. Maritime domain awareness (MDA) 207. MARTA 208. Matamoros 209. Meth Lab 210. Methamphetamine 211. Metro 212. Mexican army 213. Mexicles 214. Mexico 215. Michoacana 216. Militia 217. Mitigation 218. MS13 or MS-13 219. Mud slide or Mudslide 220. Mutation 221. Mysql injection 222. Narco banners (Spanish equivalents) 223. Narcos 224. Narcotics 225. National Guard 226. National infrastructure 227. National laboratory 228. National Operations Center (NOC) 229. National preparedness 230. National preparedness initiative 231. National security 232. Nationalist 233. NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center) 234. Nerve agent 235. New Federation 236. Nigeria 237. Nogales 238. North Korea 239. Norvo Virus 240. Nuclear 241. Nuclear facility 242. Nuclear threat 243. Nuevo Leon 244. Organized crime 245. Outbreak 246. Pakistan 247. Pandemic 248. Phishing 249. Phreaking 250. Pipe bomb 251. Pirates 252. Plague 253. PLF (Palestine Liberation Front) 254. PLO (Palestine Libration Organization) 255. Plot 256. Plume 257. Police 258. Pork 259. Port 260. Port Authority 261. Powder (white) 262. Power 263. Power lines 264. Power outage 265. Prevention 266. Public Health 267. Quarantine 268. Radiation 269. Radicals 270. Radioactive 271. Recall 272. Recovery 273. Recruitment 274. Red Cross 275. Relief 276. Resistant 277. Response 278. Reynose 279. Reyosa 280. Ricin 281. Riot 282. Rootkit 283. Salmonella 284. San Diego 285. Sarin 286. Scammers 287. Screening 288. Secret Service (USSS) 289. Secure Border Initiative (SBI) 290. Security 291. Service disruption 292. Shelter-in-place 293. Shootout 294. Shots fired 295. Sick 296. Sinaloa 297. Sleet 298. Small Pox 299. Smart 300. Smuggling (smugglers) 301. Snow 302. Social media 303. Somalia 304. Sonora 305. Southwest 306. Spammer 307. Spillover 308. Standoff 309. State of emergency 310. Storm 311. Strain 312. Stranded/Stuck 313. Subway 314. Suicide attack 315. Suicide bomber 316. Suspicious package/device 317. Suspicious substance 318. SWAT 319. Swine 320. Symptoms 321. Taliban 322. Tamaulipas 323. Tamiflu 324. Tamil Tiger 325. Target 326. Task Force 327. Telecommunications 328. Temblor 329. Terror 330. Terrorism 331. Threat 332. Tijuana 333. Tornado 334. Torreon 335. Toxic 336. Trafficking 337. Transportation security 338. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) 339. Tremor 340. Trojan 341. Tsunami 342. Tsunami Warning Center 343. TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) 344. Tuberculosis (TB) 345. Tucson 346. Twister 347. Typhoon 348. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) 349. U.S. Consulate 350. United Nations (UN) 351. Vaccine 352. Violence 353. Viral Hemorrhagic Fever 354. Virus 355. Warning 356. Watch 357. Water/air borne 358. Wave 359. Weapons cache 360. Weapons grade 361. Wildfire 362. WMATA 363. World Health Organization (WHO and components) 364. Worm 365. Yemen 366. YumaThe list is not final. The manual notes, “As natural and manmade disasters occur, new search terms may be added.”
