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Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites

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Emacs has a keystroke that would insert keywords into the bottom of email messages...

 

M-x spook adds a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.

The idea behind this feature is the suspicion that the NSA1 and other intelligence agencies snoop on all electronic mail messages that contain keywords suggesting they might find them interesting. (The agencies say that they don't, but that's what they would say.) The idea is that if lots of people add suspicious words to their messages, the agencies will get so busy with spurious input that they will have to give up reading it all. Whether or not this is true, it at least amuses some people.

 

of course, that was before most email was web-based or mobile and folks still had dedicated email readers. Still, the same concept could apply to social media and would be relatively easy to write a chrome/mozilla plugin for.

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Emacs has a keystroke that would insert keywords into the bottom of email messages...

 

Be careful... there are still some Vi users around here and this could get as contentious as 9mm Vs. .45...

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There are valuable reasons for these words, though, and they could be good for security. The problem is that you cannot trust the snoopers or those in charge of the snoopers.

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Be careful... there are still some Vi users around here and this could get as contentious as 9mm Vs. .45...

 

Those Vi vs Emacs arguments get way worse .... :-)

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk. All typos courtesy of iOS.

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If you want training wheels and don't need to do anything more complex than find/replace and copy/paste, sure... Can you feed it regex and create macros?

 

To be clear we're talking about email editors. Yes on regex and I have no idea on macros, I don't use them in email.

 

I've found many people still argue for vi or emacs but it's usually only a sentimental gesture. It is rare to find someone that actually uses a terminal based email client anymore. I use Alpine for email, both at work and at home, and I find it amusing when people pontificate on which terminal based email editor is better while their graphical email program and webmail tab idles in the background. Don't forget to clean your mouse every once and a while, wouldn't want to impede your productivity!

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LOL... I am so on that list.

 

Let's see, as a disaster response professional, facilities manager, physical security, crisis management and firearms hobbyist, I must be real high on that list. Throw in being a veteran and active in my church, I must be a certified loon.

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There are valuable reasons for these words, though, and they could be good for security.  The problem is that you cannot trust the snoopers or those in charge of the snoopers.

 

Security from what? The biggest threat to our Nation is the federal government. I don't think we have much to worry about after that until you move up to the level of Russia and China, and this crap isn't designed to catch them on social networks.

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Haha.. hello!

 

It's alright to be on those lists.. in this age of data collection nearly everyone is on one list or another.

 

The only list that you don't want to be found on is the list of people who do not appear on any lists.

 

Considering the extreme caution and perfect diligence it takes to accomplish that year after year, you can imagine why the Federales might consider these people dangerous :)

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can i ask whats emac and vi?

 

I had no idea there were so many IT people on the board - I suppose it's logical considering that IT people are one of the few types who can afford to live in this state and have a little extra money for expensive hobbies like shooting.

 

VI and EMACS are both text editors that are used in various flavors of the Unix / Linux operating systems. As I look at the address bar on this forum I see index.php which leads me to believe that this forum is probably running some form of Linux.

 

The difference is that VI is a very lightweight, esoteric text editor that requires complicated commands to do some very simple things. For example, to save and quit a file, you would go into command mode and type ":qs!" . Emacs is heavier, larger more menu-driven and also more intuitive. Vi is almost always guaranteed to be on any Unix/Linux distribution. This isn't always the case with EMACS.

 

But as one poster hinted, we puff up our chest and brag about our skills with keyboard-driven text editors, but we do most of our real work with menu-driven mouse-and-keyboard editors anyway. Knowledge of Vi or EMACS is more of a source of geek pride than actual skill these days anyway.

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To be clear we're talking about email editors. Yes on regex and I have no idea on macros, I don't use them in email.

 

I've found many people still argue for vi or emacs but it's usually only a sentimental gesture. It is rare to find someone that actually uses a terminal based email client anymore. I use Alpine for email, both at work and at home, and I find it amusing when people pontificate on which terminal based email editor is better while their graphical email program and webmail tab idles in the background. Don't forget to clean your mouse every once and a while, wouldn't want to impede your productivity!

 

Ooh, cut me deep, man. :)

 

Hello to my sysadmin friends.

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The difference is that VI is a very lightweight, esoteric text editor that requires complicated commands to do some very simple things. .

 

Saying that VI is esoteric and complicated compared to emacs? Wow. %s%x instead of :qs and god have mercy on your soul if your terminal settings are wrong in either case.

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