Anatomy of misinformation

A story has been going around about a recently released document through Freedom of Information. It's generally headlined something like, "List of words that will get you on a government watchlist if you tweet them: Includes 'pork', 'emergency', and 'snow'" [or some other combination of individually innocuous words]

I read the report.


1) The thrust of the document is guidelines for monitoring ALL media outlets for information that will help Homeland Security get a picture of a breaking news story (fire, weather event, terrorism, etc.). It's not at all about any sort of long term tracking, it's about getting information about now.

2) While it does talk a lot about monitoring social media, it's explicit in saying that the interest in social media is for a) stories tweeted by major media outlets or b) tweets from any source that then get picked up and distributed by major media outlets. The document does not concern itself with isolated individual tweets. They are looking for NEWS

3) Social media is not enough of a source on its own to raise interest. Only when there's corroboration through other more credible sources.

4) There's a whole section about NOT including "Personally Identifiable Information" in the reports. Hard to build a watch list without personally identifiable information.

Nice job internet, way to uncover NOTHING

Well now.

Got a call, purportedly from my bank, about an automatic bill payment (HOA dues). No detail on the call. I logged into my account online and saw a message on the payment saying the payee was being investigated by the "Risk" department.

I called my bank (at their main number, not the number given on the phone message), and they confirmed that the call was legitimate.

It seems they were concerned about a word that was in the memo of the payment.

A couple interesting facts about that word.

1) It's been there since I started that recurring payment 2 years ago.

2) It's the name of our street and is also on the check as the street address of the account.

I pointed this out and asked why it was suddenly a problem. Apparently a new security policy.

After the call I googled the word.

Interesting fact #3 - it's the name of an ancient city in Syria.

Facepalm, GD. Wow! :eek:

You learn something new every day.

You live on Mosopotamia Blvd.?

Quick tip, Mr. President. When declining to get on board with a boycott, try not to say, "No one is more offended than me." Because clearly, people are more offended than you.

Question that I have no idea how to google. A lot of employers in the US keep workers hours to a minimum in order to avoid making them "full time" employees and having to provide benefits. My question is, in other countries with socialized medicine so that's off the table, is this also the case? Do they not let employees have enough hours to make a living?

The link comes up with a lot of US statistics. I guess to refine my question it's in countries where the benefits are off the table. Can people who who choose to, a lot work part time on purpose, get enough hours say at Target or McDonalds to be full time. Here the trend seems to be to hire more people so they all work less hours so they don't have to pay benefits. Am I making any sense?

I'm just wondering if taking health benefits off the table to to speak, would make a difference for people who work minimum wage in getting to work as may hours as they'd wish.