The Department of Homeland Security is carefully watching the internet. They search through publications like this one (actually, specifically this one: we’ve been on the DHS watch-list for awhile), as well as all of our public social media lives, for possible “Items of Interest,” which they find by searching for a whole bunch of sometimes-ridiculous keywords. (Animal New York rounded up a bunch of them.) It got us wondering: We write about a lot of security and military stuff here at PopSci. What’s the DHS reading on our site?
We filtered out our traffic to hits originating from DHS.gov, and found that, yes, the Department of Homeland Security reads PopSci. (Hi!) They’re not supplying huge traffic–barely over 50,000 hits in total–but it’s definitely enough to monitor, and we can see pretty clear spikes and valleys coming from them. The biggest spike was on July 11th, 2011, though the DHS doesn’t seem to have been looking for anything in particular that day. And there was a significant drop-off in terrorism monitoring right before Labor Day, which we attribute to ideal golf conditions. Anyway, here are five of their most read articles.
1. Citizens in Flood Zone Build Homemade Levees to Protect Their Homes
Published: May 19, 2011
DHS Hits: 762
The Department of Homeland Security is particularly touchy about discussion of disasters, natural or otherwise, as well as emergency assistance and preparedness. If we had included dangerous keywords like “Human to ANIMAL” or “AMTRAK” in this story, we wouldn’t be here writing this. We’d be in a prison in a country you’ve never even heard of.
2. Toy Fair 2011: The Best Kids’ Toys for Adults
Published: February 15, 2011
DHS Hits: 431
The Department of Homeland Security is looking to deploy military toys to young children, including (water) guns, a tactical seafaring warship simulator (a new version of Battleship), an introduction to mind control, and a miniature autonomous tank.
3. 11 Ways Science and Technology Are Waging War on Winter
Published: January 27, 2011
DHS Hits: 363
The Department of Homeland Security does not appreciate our taking license with the phrase “waging war.” They wage war. We write about snow-pooping robots.
4. FYI: Could Scientists Really Create a Zombie Apocalypse Virus?
Published: February 24, 2011
DHS Hits: 273
The Department of Homeland Security is relieved to find that we are not aware of any of their in-house zombie projects.
5. 2020 Vision: A Look Forward To The Promises of a Truly Amazing Year
Published: April 27, 2011
DHS Hits: 272
The Department of Homeland Security is casually interested in PopSci’s time machine.
The FBI, CIA, NSA, and Other Services
A search other governmental agencies turns up…mostly nothing. We did find out that the CIA searched more than 200 times to find an image of Khloe Kardashian, which we don’t seem to have ever published (?), and that the FBI is probably hungry because their favorite PopSci articles are all about modernist cuisine. The NSA likes toys, and the DEA seems to not be interested in us at all, which, um, yes, good, nothing to see here.
