My guess is that having almost a million twitter followers was the main differentiating factor. If metadata is the main means to track people, then being connected to many people is going to be the main way to identify “suspicious” activity.
Forsooth! Soon these wily creations will demand permission to vote on the affairs of men!
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So, as expected, there looks to be a bit more to the story than originally reported:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 1, 2013As a result of numerous media inquiries, received today by the Suffolk
County Police Department regarding an internet blog posting, the
following statement has been made available.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
From http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/an-update-on-the-pressure-cookers-google-search-story/. Emphasis mine.
So it’s not a case of the police monitoring Google searches, but rather a former employer spotting the searches coming from company-owned equipment, and contacting the police. (My guess: husband’s former employer, given the police asked for him by name.)
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“So it’s not a case of the police monitoring Google searches, but rather a former employer spotting the searches coming from company-owned equipment, and contacting the police”
So it’s not a case of accepting 100% of the statements in a police press release, but one in which … no, wait, it is a case of that.
It sounds like the facts coincide, but please do recognize this is ass-covering behavior, not an official report, and not independently verified, either.
I bet googling about guns doesn’t draw much attention at all.
[quote=“GlennF, post:44, topic:5976”]It sounds like the facts coincide, but please do recognize this is ass-covering behavior, not an official report, and not independently verified, either.
[/quote]
Given a press release with events that make sense vs. wild speculation as to causes from the author who wasn’t even there when the events occurred, I’ll take the press release.
(Though I should have included “it appears to be” or something to that effect in my original wording.)
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It seems so strange that a community which has prided itself on its outrage regarding things such as privacy rights, transparency in government investigative procedures/policies, and PRISM/NSA spying would be so quick to discount this woman’s story. What’s up with that? Had her husband written this post would there be this response?
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I know Michelle, so I give her account more credence. The idea that the police might not state all kinds of things isn’t hard to believe.
If you actually go look at her Facebook page, and check the photos, you can see that she posted a picture of fireworks on (wait for it) the 4th of July. Not exactly a terrorist action there, either.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153008673760061&set=pb.500530060.-2207520000.1375403016.&type=3&theater
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Questions, does local police have access to data collected by the NSA?
Probably not. And the coworker supposedly admitted to calling it in to the police.
EDIT: Link to OP walking back her original story.
http://openareas.tumblr.com/post/57110075747/clarification-and-update
The truth is we don’t know how many people have access to the data.
Who do we know has access? NSA obviously, FBI, CIA, etc… All these military contracting companies. Who might have access to these system? State and local police. It is possible that people in your community may have access to your personal and private data. Why not extend it further. Banks? Corporations? The very wealthy? The company you work for? Your boss?
I’ve worked for companies that felt no remorse or guilt for installing tracking and spying software on mobile phones. The software had similar capabilities that the NSA has when they tap/track/spy mobile phones. They even requested to install this spying software on mobile devices not issued by the company. Some complied. Some resisted. The average person’s humanity is not recognized by people with unlimited power.
That apparently some people here in this thread think that the fact her husband travels to Asia is justification for governmental surveillance and threatening is exactly showing which attitude (of the US public)* put the USA on the speedway to totalitarianism.
*assuming those commenters are US citizens.
What I find weird and maybe Alanis-Ironic about this story is that they were reported to the police by her husband’s previous employer, Speco Technologies.
Guess what Speco is in the business of selling?
For over fifty years we at Speco Technologies have dedicated ourselves to providing the latest innovations in video surveillance and electronic accessories, as well as the highest quality audio products for residential and commercial use. We have committed ourselves to providing affordable, dependable merchandise, delivering exceptional customer service, and offering extensive product training, technical and marketing support. We want our customers to grow with us and move forward.
I guess the surveillance starts with your own employees? Eating your own dogfood, and all that?
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I invite people inclined to grant credibility to Ms. Catalano to read this post at Alicublog; a couple of points:
Ms. Catalano claimed:
I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack.
This is now asserted to be wholly untrue:
Suffolk County Police bulletin they worked from described his search terms as “pressure cooker bombs” and “backpacks.”There’s a bit of a difference between shopping for pressure cookers and shopping for pressure cooker bombs. And it’s not much of a stretch to suppose the two searches might have been extremely close temporally.
But the key thing is, this wasn’t the government. Big Brother wasn’t watching her family surf the web. It wasn’t even Google or Bing getting the vapors. It was the company that owned the computer her family was using, apparently getting into a tizzy and calling the cops. And in our frightened world, when a company’s officers call you up and say “our former employee has been searching for bomb-making tips, and we were scared enough to call you”, you check it out. After all, they know the guy, and they’re worried - and they have some possible documentary evidence! No cop wants to be the schmuck who ignored a key tip. So they sent (too many) local cops (on some sort of terrorism-prevention task force) to ask some polite questions. What should the terrorism-prevention people have done differently, under the circumstances?
Mind you, I’m inclined to really doubt the company that called in the tip was using sound judgment. I know I have done some weird searches to learn more about bad things that are in the news, after all. Unless her husband’s former employers were convinced he was a really scary dude, his search history doesn’t seem that scary. But, I say again: given a tip like that, surely the cops couldn’t ignore it?
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There is a whole separate discussion to be had on workplace surveillance. As I understand what I’ve heard of important court decisions, if your employer provides you with a device or provides network access to your personally owned device, they have total rights to the data passing through the device they own or the network access they pay for. You have no right to privacy, even as regards obviously personal matters done on your own time or in your own home. I find this all very dubious (and much more so, I 'm concerned not enough people know about it, either as something needing reform or as something affecting them personally), but it’s not a terribly recent development, and it’s not the NSA at work.
Normally, the book you need is sold right next to the jars, pectin, lids, etc. Or take your chances and buy it on Amazon.
I did look there,* and just because it was the 4th doesn’t mean it isn’t a picture of (at least in my region) a ton of illegal explosives. (omg bold formatting)
And yes, obviously that’s not worth going to someone’s house for that, but it’s many times more plausible than the NSA caring about separate backpack and pressure cooker searches.
Looks like that wasn’t the cause anyways, but neither was NSA snooping.
*though admittedly I completely missed that it was on the 4th. I’d read it was near then, but didn’t notice it was directly on the day.
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