The Daily Mail reports that federal thought police have compiled an "intriguing" list of words and phrases to be used to "monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S." The list includes "obvious choices such as 'attack', 'Al Qaeda', 'terrorism' and 'dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like 'pork', 'cloud', 'team' and 'Mexico'."
The Dept. of Homeland Security was forced to release the list by a privacy watchdog group that filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Although DHS claims it only employs the list to detect legitimate security risks, "[t]he words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder'* used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'."
Note that the avoidance of many of these words would make public discussion of security and military issues -- to say nothing of the weather -- impossible. But note also that your continued insistence on discussing such matters may attract the security state's interest.
Of course, you could decide to mess with them by putting references to "pork," "snow," "bridge," "tremor," "Tucson," "worm" and "metro" in all your communications.
In a video announcing the launch of FreeSpeechForPeople.org, a new group that plans to organize against the U.S. Supreme Court's 5 to 4 decision on January 21, 2010 to remove limitations on corporations' election spending, Jamie Raskin, professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment at American University, Rep. Donna Edwards, and others discuss the meaning of the case for our democracy.
Here's Prof. Raskin on Democracy Now! and C-Span.
Among the many problems with the decision is the fact that the majority over-reached, deciding to throw out campaign financing laws merely because such restrictions offend the conservatives' ideological sensibilities. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent, "The only relevant thing that has changed since [previous decisions limiting corporate speech] is the composition of this Court. Today’s ruling thus strikes at the vitals of stare decisis, the means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion" that "permits society to presume that bedrock principles are founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals." This is judicial activism at its most transparent and most virulent, and gives the lie to the fiction that it is the right wing justices who respect the Constitution and the rule of law.
Our democracy, already at risk because of the wealth and power of corporations, is further undermined by the court's action. Justice Stevens: "Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races."
Action was needed before this decision to make our society more democratic. We have pushed for many of them, from changes in electoral procedures to campaign finance reform. David Swanson outlines many of the needed actions on AfterDowningStreet, "including public financing of elections, free media for elections, shareholder control of corporations, public control of corporations, a variety of constitutional amendments including one to undo corporate personhood entirely, and an array of legislative steps, including Congressman Alan Grayson's bills to tax corporate political spending, to require public reporting of corporate spending on influencing public opinion, and to apply antitrust laws and other regulations to political committees. But ultimately we're going to have to build a popular movement around an amendment to the Constitution that we can force through Congress and the states."
While it might seem obvious to you that emails, text messages, IMs and tweets fall under the protection of the First Amendment, the guardians of authority may think otherwise. As the Times puts it, "[a]s demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement.
On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.
Elliot Madison, a 41-year social worker and self-described anarchist, was arrested during the G20 and charged with "hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime." He is out on $30,000 bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn in Pittsburgh where the Pennsylvania State Police said he was found "with computers and police scanners while using the social-networking site Twitter to spread information about police movements."
Text messaging and twittering have been important to large scale demonstrations from the Republican National Convention in 2004 to the Iranian election protests of recent weeks. Elliott Madison is one of the first in this country to be formally charged with criminal twittering, however. A Pennsylvania complaint accuses him of “directing others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.”
A search warrant executed by the F.B.I. at Mr. Madison’s house authorized agents and officers looking for violations of federal rioting laws to seize computers and phones, black masks and clothes and financial records and address books. Among the items seized, according to a list prepared by the agents, were electronic equipment, newspapers, books and gas masks. The items also included what was described as a picture of Lenin.
What kind of anarchist makes a hero out Lenin?
A judge ordered authorities to stop examining the seized materials until Oct. 16, while she considered whether the FBI's search warrant was too wide and too vague.
Although Madison's activities, as part "the Tin Can Comms Collective, a group of people who collected information and used Twitter to send mass text messages describing protest-related events that they observed on the streets," more closely resemble those of a reporter than of a revolutionary, for the moment police agencies will be able to harass protesters and stifle dissent with bogus arrests for texting and tweeting. Organizers will need to take care in using social networking and digital communication media in confrontations with authorities, at least until the courts get everyone's rights and obligations sorted out and Constitutional guarantees are put back in place.
The Dept. of Homeland Security was forced to release the list by a privacy watchdog group that filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Although DHS claims it only employs the list to detect legitimate security risks, "[t]he words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder'* used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'." 
Times 
