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.
That should be enough to start the alarms and get you moved up towards the top of the list.
Yep. Just remember to wrap your smartphone in tin foil, or crawl into the freezer, before you search for sensitive terms. Otherwise Big Brudda will get you!
Actually, that is almost what the NSA program is doing, adopting the tactics of web marketers to find terrorists. The reason it isn’t as effective is not because the NSA can’t duplicate the tactics of the marketers, it’s because they are not allowed to duplicate all those tactics. They can’t, for example, try to finagle ways to put tracking cookies on everyone’s computer, or try to deceive us into installing tracking software on our machines. There are limits on how much data they can grab and keep indiscriminately too.
So, if we allowed them even more unrestricted surveillance, they’d be just as effective as marketers, but they’d also be much more destructive. Marketers just use their power to annoy us, but the government wouldn’t stop at that.
Once was transferring data files off a computer from a woman who had the left the company
Came across file called DIVORCE
Letter to her lawyer about what a louse her husband is
How many times drunk, how many times slapped her around...
Made great reading before deleted it......
I disagree. Marketers could segment the terrorists without the tools you mention, just with the data that our moronic fedgov counterterrorism nitwits say is not enough.
Yet you maintain that even thinking obama had anything to do with Hastings’ death is just plain silly.
Interesting.
Uh-huh..sure thing, yep , I believe that.
What seems to be missing from this article is the word “allegedly”.
It will be interesting to see what the response to this assertion by the Suffolk PD is, from the supposed former employer, from the husband, and from the wife.
If preventative police action was actually part of the program wouldn't several if not many of the attacks by muslims on innocent people have been prevented? The underwear bomber, the brothers Boston, and others seem to prove the point.
Listening to Congressmen extol the virtues they seem to find in secret laws with secret courts, approving secret programs while certain political enemies are targeted also in secret doesn't even attempt to pass the smell test.
No, I think the spying is all about building that legal case against whatever political target may be of interest. Whether that explains the Rino republicans or Marco Rubio, or you or me running for some future office being confronted with the most embarrassing revelations in public. It's a tool that shouldn't exist, let alone one we're paying for.
Yes. But I think it’s even worse than that. I think if they can’t find enough actual evidence they will manufacture it out of whole cloth. Who would dare doubt it or question them?
Can we get up a pool for when that p******* c******s will only be available at flea markets?
Wave goodbye to the nice drone!
“WTF was she googling that for at work !?!?!?!? “
More like why was she being SWATed by an ex employer?
That’s why I keep all my files on a stick. I’ll eat it if I have to :)
Snort
In her case, Big Boss. The reality is that work computer traffic is routinely recorded, and searchable in a few seconds, in a way that work phone conversations are not. Even when recorded, phone conversations are a pain to monitor - voice recognition is at its infancy, and transcriptions are hit or miss, meaning that searching through phone conversations means listening for hours and hours, vs a few minutes worth of glancing through keyword searches for computer traffic.
I was extremely skeptical about the NSA siccing anyone onto this couple. There have got to have been millions of individual searches on the keywords since the Boston bombings. There is not enough police manpower to do these operations and conduct normal policing duties, not to mention the hue-and-cry, when hundreds of homes in the average township are besieged by assault rifle-wielding SWAT teams. Going back to my original point, anyone who wants to use the internet for non-work purposes during work hours should get a smartphone, and avoid the siren song of the company's free WiFi network.
No, I think assuming that is a fact without any evidence is silly. Not every time someone dies that a politician might not like is it an assassination. Get some real evidence and then it might be worth getting worked up about.
“OMG an assault BackPack!!!!”
And I have two 21 quart pressure canners, numerous canning jars, tents, backpacks, and other items from when I was still involved in Scouting. Everything is for sale, but I am afraid to advertise them, especially on Craigslist.:-(
That was the best laugh I’ve had reading something online... in months. I just kepts laughing and laughing and there was more and more and it just compounded. I love your style, sir.
Have to confess, I didn’t write it - I found it going around the internet. But like you, I was rolling when I read it - had to post it :)
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