Posted on 08/01/2013 5:45:23 PM PDT by 11th_VA
In what might be Medium‘s first widespread Twitter moment, music writer Michele Catalano used the platform to blog details of an unexpected visit to her home yesterday, from six men she identifies as members of the “joint terrorism task force.”
Catalano asserts that the visit was likely prompted by her husband searching for the term “backpacks” in close conjunction with her searching for the term “pressure cookers” and her son reading the news. Or something.
Turns out the visit was prompted by the searches, but not in the way most speculation asserted – by a law enforcement-initiated, NSA-enabled dragnet of the couple’s web history. It turns out either Catalano or her husband were conducting these searches from a work computer. And that employer, “a Bay Shore based computer company,” called the police on their former employee.
The Suffolk County Police Department has just released the following information related to the case:
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 what we can glean from LinkedIn, the computer company referenced above may be Speco Technologies, where Catalano’s husband Todd Pinnell worked as a product manager until last April (we’ve called Speco to confirm). This should be a teachable moment to anyone who thinks that their workplace computers are somehow not being tracked.
While a PRISM-backed system, or Google itself, tracking user activity wasn’t the cause for this specific incident, the fact is that Google does comply with law enforcement to hand over user data. Can the FBI or local police provide a search warrant to Google, and can Google comply with such a request? Yes, and the company publishes the requests in a report every year. This is nothing new.
And, according to that transparency report, “widespread” requests, like the months of search history that would be needed to figure out the pressure cooker and backpack coincidence, often result in a push to narrow the scope of the investigation from Google’s end.
But, according to an industry source, it doesn’t work the other way around i.e., Google isn’t flagging searches for “pressure cooker + backpacks” for police.
It’d be crazy if it did though.
Stupid woman.
With the American Stasi in full gear, paranoia is not paranoia; it’s just good survival thinking.
And gee, I bought a backpack from Amazon on-line in June.
The point is, that kind of two-point data-driven investigation is stupid and a waste of time.
“While a PRISM-backed system, or Google itself, tracking user activity wasn’t the cause for this specific incident, the fact is that Google does comply with law enforcement to hand over user data.”
BS. I thought that was the whole Snowden fiasco? That Yahoo, Skype, Microsoft, CrApple, facebook etc left a backdoor open for the govt to snoop on citizens?
My job is a real pressure cooker. Yesterday afternoon, my boss blew up at me. She had run out of fertilizer for her office plants and blamed me.
That woman is a real terror. My morale is being ground down to zero. It felt like my head was going to explode.
On top of that, somebody spilled a box of paper clips in the break room and it felt like I was walking on ball bearings.
After work, I had a couple beers with my buddy Mohammed down at the el-Tikrit Bar and Grill. We both had pulled-pork submarine sandwiches. They're called the Obama Special and they are the bomb. One is plenty but two is suicide, which is why I had to loosen the buttons on my vest.
Then we played a game of darts. They have those new darts shaped like little guided missiles but I couldn't hit the target. My buddy Sam is way better at launching the missiles than anybody. He throws them so fast that they sound like a low-flying plane...
Just like the one Adolph G Zimmerman used to gun down that innocent lil child!
OMG an assault BackPack!!!!
And the employer discovered the search within one day ? Not likely.
Did you read the article you posted? It was the husband who searched at work.
She didn't want it tracked to her home 'puter!
HE didn't want it tracked to HIS home 'puter!
Das ist besser, ja?
Well done! Let us know when they come to your door.
"It turns out either Catalano or her husband were conducting these searches from a work computer."
Outlaw backpacks!!
I thought that's what smartphones were for.
Well said. I work with marketing databases. I have said for some time that if we really want to find terrorists in this country, turn the data over to marketers. They would have them segmented into the exact variety of terrorist in three weeks.
The employer might have called the cops but he didn’t make them take it seriously.
She said she googled the pressure cookers, while her husband googled the backpacks. So, I’m guessing it was a company laptop that she also used at home.
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