As promised, here is the entire report issued by the Department of Defense. It includes the text of several students’ e-mails that the DoD considers “potential terrorist activity.” To clarify my two former posts, it is the DoD that is responsible for the surveillance, not the NSA.
Reading the report is funny and disgusting at the same time. The header even contains: “This is being provided only to alert commanders and staff to potential terrorist activity“.
The e-mails are trivial, with not the hint of any violent action. The most dramatic action any student e-mail mentioned was a “food not bombs” demonstration complete with a drum circle.
Except for living up to the college hippie stereotype, the actions described in these e-mails don’t hurt anybody, especially not to the level of a terroristic threat.
The funniest part of the report: “The following is a paraphrased version of the text of the e-mail. The paraphrasing is necessary due to the poor grammar and spelling contained in the e-mail. Looks like I’m not the only poor speller.
This is our future: drum circles, bad spelling, and “terrorist” college students. Here is the full report in PDF form.
[tags]NSA, DoD, Spying, E-mail[/tags]