Google 'Pressure Cookers' and 'Backpacks,' Get a Visit from the Cops

• Kingofrunes wrote on 2013-08-01 19:05

  
  Michele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which prompts the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?
  
  Catalano (who is a professional writer) describes the tension of that visit.
  
  [T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked. ...
  
  Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.
  The men identified themselves as members of the "joint terrorism task force." The composition of such task forces depend on the region of the country, but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, include a variety of federal agencies. (The photo above is from the door-to-door sweep in Watertown at that time.) Among those agencies: the FBI and Homeland Security.
  
  Update 1:45 p.m.: In a conversation with The Atlantic Wire, FBI spokesperson Peter Donald confirmed The Guardian's report that the FBI was not involved in the visit itself. Asked if the FBI was involved in providing information that led to the visit, Donald replied that he could not answer the question at this point, as he didn't know.
  
  We asked if the Suffolk and Nassau police, which The Guardian reported were the authorities that effected the raid, are part of the government's regional Joint Terrorism Task Force. They are, he replied, representing two of the 52 agencies that participate. He said that local police are often deputized federal marshals for that purpose — but that the JTTF "did not visit the residence." He later clarified: "Any officers, agents, or other representatives of the JTTF did not visit that location."
  
  We are awaiting a response from Suffolk County police and the Department of Homeland Security which operates an investigatory fusion center in the region.
  
  Ever since details of the NSA's surveillance infrastructure were leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency has been insistent on the boundaries of the information it collects. It is not, by law, allowed to spy on Americans — although there are exceptions of which it takes advantage. Its PRISM program, under which it collects internet content, does not include information from Americans unless those Americans are connected to terror suspects by no more than two other people. It collects metadata on phone calls made by Americans, but reportedly stopped collecting metadata on Americans' internet use in 2011. So how, then, would the government know what Catalano and her husband were searching for?
  
  It's possible that one of the two of them is tangentially linked to a foreign terror suspect, allowing the government to review their internet activity. After all, that "no more than two other people" ends up covering millions of people. Or perhaps the NSA, as part of its routine collection of as much internet traffic as it can, automatically flags things like Google searches for "pressure cooker" and "backpack" and passes on anything it finds to the FBI.
  
  Or maybe it was something else. On Wednesday, The Guardian reported on XKeyscore, a program eerily similar to Facebook search that could clearly allow an analyst to run a search that picked out people who'd done searches for those items from the same location. How those searches got into the government's database is a question worth asking; how the information got back out seems apparent.
  
  It is also possible that there were other factors that prompted the government's interest in Catalano and her husband. He travels to Asia, she notes in her article. Who knows. Which is largely Catalano's point.
  
  They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.
  One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.
  
  But the NSA doesn't collect data on Americans, so this certainly won't happen to you.
  

  
  
  Source
  
  Looks like your Google Searches aren't safe from the US Government :shoe:
• Thorne wrote on 2013-08-01 19:16
  Wow. Really? If you google search ANYTHING they might think might signal an attack they can just kick open your front door? Absolutely insane.
• Nagizuki wrote on 2013-08-01 19:25
  If you thought your Google searches were ever safe you clearly weren't thinking.
  
  Just another footnote in the neverending war between rights to privacy vs. rights to security.
  
  I'd like to note they didn't come "kicking his door down". It's described as pretty civil, if a bit interrogational.
• Cynic wrote on 2013-08-01 20:44

  [T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live.

  
  
  Because where you're from is totally relevant. Bunch of racist bullshit..
  
  Seems kind of dumb that they're deciding to infringe on people's privacy for this of all things, too. How about they start cracking down on people who google child porn, rape and other sick shit instead? I mean really.
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2013-08-01 22:34

  Quote from Cynic;1130432:

  How about they start cracking down on people who google child porn, rape and other sick shit instead? I mean really.

  
  
  Uh.. How about no? Someone who looks up rape porn is just as likely to rape someone as someone who looks up pressure cookers is to build a bomb with it. A -LOT- of people have rape fantasys, etc. and look up porn that is designed to look like rape, or porn with people who look younger than they actually are yet have no intention of ever raping anyone or looking at actual children naked. So that would lead to thousands of innocent people who just happen to have a fetish having their doors kicked in. Judging someone by what they like sexually is no better than judging them by race.
  
  
  Here's an idea, how about they start not invading our privacy and let us google whatever we damn well please.
• TLCBonaparte wrote on 2013-08-01 23:40
  From now I, I will google pressure cooker and backpack everyday until the Canadian version shows up.
• Episkey wrote on 2013-08-02 01:53
  Pressure Cookers? Well, I mean - sure they can be dangerous but I mean ... honestly.
  
  Time to always Google sensitive things using a proxy/Incognito Mode. [S]Or just not worry about it.[/S]
• BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2013-08-02 08:56

  Suffolk County Criminal Intelligence Detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee. The former employee’s computer searches took place on this employee’s workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms “pressure cooker bombs” and “backpacks.”
  
  After interviewing the company representatives, Suffolk County Police Detectives visited the subject’s home to ask about the suspicious internet searches. The incident was investigated by Suffolk County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Detectives and was determined to be non-criminal in nature.
  
  Any further inquiries regarding this matter should be directed to the Suffolk County Police Department

  
  
  http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/01/employer-tipped-off-police-in-pressure-cookerbackpack-gate-not-google/
  
  Turns out the police were visiting because the employer tipped them off of the Google searches the people made at work, not because of any police surveillance.
  
  and they specifically googled "Pressure cooker bombs"
  not pressure cookers
• Space Pirate Nithiel wrote on 2013-08-02 10:19
  Well, that site and the site in the first post have totally different stories. So I guess only the ones involved will ever know the truth.
• Osayidan wrote on 2013-08-02 12:52

  Quote from Cynic;1130432:

  Because where you're from is totally relevant. Bunch of racist bullshit..
  
  Seems kind of dumb that they're deciding to infringe on people's privacy for this of all things, too. How about they start cracking down on people who google child porn, rape and other sick shit instead? I mean really.

  
  
  That's just as bad, regardless of what people are into they have their right to privacy. Regardless of the situation the authorities should require a warrant.
  They should be going after the people who create and distribute that content with a much higher priority than those who consume it anyways.
• Yoorah wrote on 2013-08-02 13:04
  I'm inclined to believe the latter. And you should not expect privacy when using a company computer. Network communications go through several layers of content filters, IDSs, firewalls, etc before they even hit the Internet.
• BobYoMeowMeow wrote on 2013-08-02 15:50

  Quote from Space Pirate Nithiel;1130686:

  Well, that site and the site in the first post have totally different stories. So I guess only the ones involved will ever know the truth.

  
  
  No they don't.
  The first post's site updated with the information that they Googled at work
  An employer can call the police on employees.
  
  

  Quote from Yoorah;1130720:

  I'm inclined to believe the latter. And you should not expect privacy when using a company computer. Network communications go through several layers of content filters, IDSs, firewalls, etc before they even hit the Internet.

  
  This.
  The information goes through IT no matter what.