Brian4Liberty
02-12-2014, 12:59 PM
See something, say something. Double plus good, comrade.
Big Boss, Not Big Brother, Spotted Long Island Family's 'Suspicious' Google Searches
On Wednesday morning, six law enforcement officers visited a house in Long Island. They were there to ask whether the residents — a married couple and their son — were involved in terrorism. The female half of the couple, freelance journalist Michele Catalano, who was at work when the visit occurred, blogged about the incident afterward, reporting that the “joint terrorism task force” officers were there because of her family’s Google searches and other innocuous Internet activity.
“I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack,” she writes on Medium.com. Her 20-year-old son “read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet.”
The officers asked her husband — “Do you have any bombs? … Do you own a pressure cooker? … Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb?” Her claim that the feds were going after people who Google “ pressure cookers” and “backpacks” went viral after it was repeated by the Atlantic and The Guardian — highly reputable sources when it comes to government surveillance.
...
The Internet activity was actually monitored by an employer not the feds. The Suffolk County police department says that it questioned the family after getting a tip about suspicious computer searches on an ex-employee’s work computer. The statement from the police department:
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.”
...
More:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/01/employer-reported-suspicious-google-searches-that-led-to-terrorism-task-force-visit-for-long-island-family/
Big Boss, Not Big Brother, Spotted Long Island Family's 'Suspicious' Google Searches
On Wednesday morning, six law enforcement officers visited a house in Long Island. They were there to ask whether the residents — a married couple and their son — were involved in terrorism. The female half of the couple, freelance journalist Michele Catalano, who was at work when the visit occurred, blogged about the incident afterward, reporting that the “joint terrorism task force” officers were there because of her family’s Google searches and other innocuous Internet activity.
“I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack,” she writes on Medium.com. Her 20-year-old son “read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet.”
The officers asked her husband — “Do you have any bombs? … Do you own a pressure cooker? … Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb?” Her claim that the feds were going after people who Google “ pressure cookers” and “backpacks” went viral after it was repeated by the Atlantic and The Guardian — highly reputable sources when it comes to government surveillance.
...
The Internet activity was actually monitored by an employer not the feds. The Suffolk County police department says that it questioned the family after getting a tip about suspicious computer searches on an ex-employee’s work computer. The statement from the police department:
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.”
...
More:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/01/employer-reported-suspicious-google-searches-that-led-to-terrorism-task-force-visit-for-long-island-family/