Some 300 million people live in the United States of America, and the federal government is spying on an unknown number of them, who have done absolutely nothing wrong, prowling through their most sensitive personal data, and keeping it on file forever. Today I’m going to turn the situation on its head, and show you just how easy it is to gather information on the government, and some amazing bits of stupidity that came out of this experiment.

As some of you are aware, whenever you visit a Web site, the server records details of your access, such as your IP address, the page you visited, the page you came from, and the browser and type of computer you were using. Normally, none of this information can be used to personally identify you, without a warrant or national security letter forcing your ISP to identify you, so it’s only useful for aggregate statistics.

But taking a look at some of the unknown individuals can be quite interesting.

I pulled the server logs for this site from October 1 to yesterday, November 22, and analyzed them to find anyone from a U.S. government agency who visited the site. Even I was startled by what I found.

Let’s take a look at what government bureaucrats were doing when they crossed paths with homeland stupidity, or in a few cases, exhibited it. Search terms used should appearlike this. Almost all accesses came from Internet Explorer on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and the exceptions are noted and notable.

United States Postal Service

Let’s start with the government agency defined in the Constitution. One USPS employee came here after searching Google for information on theDell laptop keylogger hoax. That person was using Linux and Firefox. Another, using Internet Explorer on Windows, came here after searching Google forwww guerrero plastic.com. I don’t get that one. A third person, also using IE on Windows, was browsing majorgeeks.com and clicked on the Homeland Stupidity link to my site posted there last week. Clearly some government bureaucrats don’t have enough work to do. This will be a recurring theme.

U.S. Courts

I got quite a bit of traffic from various U.S. Courts and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. One person was reading all about Flock, the new social browser based on Firefox. That person was already using Firefox. From there, it just gets strange.

One person searched forhouston crime statistics since katrina. I don’t think I have any of those (yet). One searched for+lizards +rid. I’m not sure if they were trying to eradicate a lizard problem, but that isn’t at all what they found. Several were referred here from Daily Kos while reading about Georgia’s new poll tax. One of them was using Windows 98, surprisingly.

Department of Justice

First I have to state that everyone from the USDOJ who came here received a 403 Forbidden page through November 22, as I apparently had their entire Internet presence blocked. The block has since been removed, and now they too can enjoy homeland stupidity from the comfort of their own desks.

One person was seen using Netscape 7.1, old as that is. Upgrade to Firefox already.

Virtually everyone from USDOJ came here through entirely boring search terms, though a few were interesting:“who leaked” “secret prisons”, as if Google would know that, but I did write about it;southwest airlines complaints which leads me to wonder if that person bought a Meet the Fuckers T-shirt;tracy henke and COPS office;“new orleans under martial law”, and they’re still arguing over that; and, unsurprisingly,national security letters.

Department of the Treasury

Several agencies under Treasury use outbound addresses which merely say *.treas.gov, and so are very difficult to discern from other accesses. Where they can be discerned, they are listed separately. The following could not be attributed to any particular agency within Treasury:

One person was looking forcustoms service email addresses; one was searching forfbi spying congress 10 november 2005, and I would suspect that person isn’t a U.S. national; another looked foreviction process new orleans and discovered that the eviction process is to post an eviction notice on the door, and then use the National Guard to prevent the tenant from getting the notice to find out when their court date is. And yesterday, one searched forlive in fear or security. I’m not quite sure what that person was trying to find.

Internal Revenue Service

One person at the IRS came here looking for thedelay in daylight savings time, and a couple of others came here by finding my site on an internal list of bookmarks of “security” sites on a server called nocsvr025. Hm, someone there seems to like me. I wonder if they’ll help me with my taxes.

Department of Homeland Security

This is the big one, the one you’ve all been waiting for! And actually, this list is pretty extensive. But like Treasury, hits showing as from *.dhs.gov may also be from agencies under the department, such as Immigation and Customs Enforcement. These won’t be listed separately as I didn’t have a good way to distinguish them. And they keep reorganizing the bureaucracy anyway.

Search terms people at Homeland Security used included“illegal aliens” “hurricane katrina”, in which I presume they were displaced along with everyone else;delay daylight savings, and several people searched for this or a variation thereof;border patrol, which means I’m moving up in the search engines;U.S. BORDER PATROL, which shows they leave their Caps Lock on, too;walmart pennsylvania arrests 2005, and found something else entirely; andARREST ACRONYM EM, oops, there’s that Caps Lock again.

Notable names include“Charles Cape” wireless, a search I actually expected to see from GAO or the OIG; and a couple of people searched forFrank Figueroa November 2005, the former head of ICE in Tampa, Florida (look him up) and one of them seems to now be a subscriber;tom baumgartner homeland security, but I haven’t said a word about him yet.

One person looked fordue to database security exposures, there is an increased risk that unauthorized individuals could gain access to critical Secret Service database resources and compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive SSWeb data, continues the actual quotation from an OIG report on Secret Service computer security. Like I said, it sucks.

And some of them border on surreal (no pun intended):DHS Low morale, and to this person I suggest look around you, and if everyone seems unhappy, there’s probably low morale;what causes suicide bombings, and yes, I do indeed have the answer; andwalmart job application, er, if you work for Homeland Security, why would you trade that in to go work for Wal-Mart?

And apparently the word about me is getting around. One person searched forDepartment of Homeland Stupidity, seemingly at the behest of his co-worker, who had searched for theimmigration and customs enforcement logo (shouldn’t they already have those on an intranet?) and apparently thought it was funny. Maybe I can help reduce theDHS LOW Morale that yet another person searched for.

Secret Service

One person in the Secret Service, looking forgcn secret service, in which the dismal state of Secret Service computer security is discussed, wound up here, where I plainly said it sucks. This person, unlike almost everyone else in the federal government, was using Firefox.

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Update: It’s come to my attention that some addresses registered to FEMA actually belong to the White House. Keep this in mind as you read this section; I haven’t yet separated out which is which.

This agency got a lot of attention about its various bungled responses to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, some of it here in previous articles. Imagine my surprise when they turned up in the logs.

And the very first hit I see is a FEMA employee who searched forstupid people wilma. If I ever find out who this person is, I’ll buy them a mirror. What a way to show your disrespect!

Other FEMA employees searched forsingles night at wal mart, but they cancelled it; a few people searched for variants offema oig report add, where FEMA employees find some terrible news about their computers;brown fema joke email, and I’ve posted copies of a few of those; andFEMA, “Cumberland, MD”, uh, I dunno, don’t you all have an internal directory?

Customs and Border Protection

When they aren’t guarding our borders, our ports of entry and our coastlines, what are they doing? Among other things, they’re looking at the world’s largest catfish. (Yes, sometimes I can see what they’re doing at other sites.)

Notable search terms that were attributable to CBP includearmy high school drop-outs, yes, the Army takes them now;us border patrol, which as I said means I’m moving up in the world;al qaeda training manual, which makes me wonder again if the government will ever have an even somewhat integrated IT network;immigration and customs enforcement articles, in which someone finds out just who’s torturing whom;immigration and customs enforcement tampa, and for what happened down there, do what one person did and search forFrank Figueroa;proposition h, which resembles Preparation H;Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which shows I’m really moving up in the world;bill jordan border patrol, and I haven’t written about him, but the story is interesting; andhomeland stupidity, which shows they’re passing the word around, too.

In the morale department, they searched forstudy Homeland Security low morale, and as I said earlier, just look around at your co-workers;homeland security morale, hm, I’m sensing a pattern here;dhs morale, OK, we’re well past pattern now, what’s going on at CBP? Why does the morale there seem to be lower than the rest of Homeland Security?

National Security Agency

The ultra-secret signals intelligence agency gives up a few secrets every time one of them gets on the Internet. And they seem get on the Internet a lot, which let me tease a few tiny bits of intel out of the agency.

One person there was reading all about Bad Behavior, the PHP-based link spam blocker which I wrote and am in the middle of rewriting. Now where and why would they run Bad Behavior, unless they’ve started running blogs, wikis or CMS software on the public Internet. Then you have to ask yourself, why are they doing that? But they seem to stumble across Bad Behavior all the time. One person searched forhttp_host: field and found it.

One person at the NSA was looking for help with aproblem error speed hardware settings fedora linux, and wound up here. I hope the walkthrough helped. One person just searched forerror, and that person actually stuck around and read an article or two. Another person was looking for“military radios”. He found they’re giving the Pentagon the jitters. Someone else there searched for theal qaeda training manual. I hope he had a good reason; the thing is boring.

Use of Firefox is fairly extensive at NSA, and I saw a few copies of Netscape, but use of Linux far less so.

Central Intelligence Agency

As the primary foreign intelligence collection agency for the U.S., the CIA has its own secrets to keep. Like anyone, those secrets can leak out once analysts and other employees begin using the Internet. And the secret seems to be that the CIA is keeping tabs on other U.S. government agencies.

Search terms seen from the CIA include42 years old, presumably in regard to the DOD’s change in recruiting requirements; andFBI intelligence, and I can’t imagine what they were expecting to find as there isn’t a whole lot of it. One user with Netscape had their referrers blocked, but was clearly looking for information on the USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization.

Federal Aviation Administration

It seems that some of the people in the FAA are quite bored. Others are quite stupid. Which seems to explain a lot.

Of the bored ones, one of them found me through Slashdot. Another found me through Technorati. Yet another found my site in the sidebar of another blog. That person happened to hit my “best of” posting, and spent a while reading some of my best posts of the last year. Yet another person found my site from the Homeland Stupidity link at majorgeeks.com.

On the stupid side, one person searched forWALMART APPLICATION, making me ask not only why, if you work for the FAA, would you want to go work at Wal-Mart? And one person at the Great Lakes Logistics Center (yes, it exists) searched fortarget job applications. Again, why?

Department of State

Even the State Department stopped by for some homeland stupidity. One found me by looking through Technorati’s list of Politics blogs.

Someone there was looking for information about“Walter Jones” Freedom fries, who actually changed his mind and now wants the U.S. out of Iraq. One searched for“Joseph Weisenthal”, who wrote a one-question smallest political quiz. And the most confusing search of all seems to besecret tags defeat. Which secret tags do you want to defeat? Another searched forEric Wabant, who reads this site from time to time. I wonder if I should warn him, before the National Security Letter shows up?

One browsed majorgeeks.com and clicked the Homeland Stupidity link there. There are geeks in the State Department?

People at the State Department seemed quite interested in Hurricane Katrina news. One searched forblanco rebuild commission. One person searched forEminent Domain in New Orleans, which they’re likely to use on the Lower 9th Ward. Another searched forFEMA press conference in New Orleans.

House of Representatives

It seems that all outbound traffic from the House of Representatives uses the same IP address, so it’s impossible to attribute anything to a particular representative. But surprisingly, the things they searched for were exactly what I would expect.

I saw one looking forfingerprinting, walt disney world. Yes, they do that. One looked for“meet the fuckers”, and found out about one person’s ordeal on Southwest Airlines. One searched forbehavior, and I’m not sure what sort of behavior they were looking for. I usually deal only in the bad kind. One searched forKelo v. New London. Another used Yahoo to search for“online freedom of speech act” Holt, and got directed to the wrong page. Should have used Google. Two searched for“bridge to nowhere”, the Alaska boondoggle, and learned they’re still getting the money.

One searched forcongress campaign website 2006, apparently not realizing you’re supposed to make your own. That person did get to read Michael Badnarik’s 2006 campaign website, though.

Representatives were quite interested in news about hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One searched for“new orleans” ice fema, learning that the ice went to Maine. One searched forreturn to new orleans nagin and got to read the bickering. One searched fornemis dhs, which will explain all about FEMA’s disorganized computer infrastructure. Another person searched forPFO Rita Wilma. That’s the PFO Housing Group, I think.

They were also concerned about border security. One searched forstate of emergency in arizona. Another searched forfederal troops used on new mexico border. Another searched foroklahoma city immigration and customs enforcement.

Other

I also saw hits from a wide variety of government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, NOAA, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Geological Survey, National Science Foundation, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Tennessee Valley Authority, Government Accountability Office, Government Printing Office, and many more. I had hits from dozens of national laboratories, for instance, too numerous to list.

And I haven’t even gotten into the military sites, which I may take a look at in the future.

Notes

I noted that the vast majority of government computers are running Windows, and their users are running Internet Explorer. I noted that a small percentage of the computers contained obvious spyware and adware, and the highest levels of those seemed to be in the House of Representatives. Use of Firefox is small, and use of Linux is even smaller, but the EPA, FAA and NSA seemed to be using both extensively — even the stupid people, in some cases.

Overall I saw evidence that many people in federal government spend much of their time simply warming their chairs and screwing around on the Internet. A few of them were highlighted here. And I saw evidence that many other people were clearly concerned about doing their jobs and doing them well. And I saw that Congress, once again, isn’t on top of this pressing national issue.