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Heck, I googled that from work when I heard about the Boston Bombers - as a way to retort liberals who thought it was another McVeigh.

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.

Dear Mom,

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...

Here's what I posted earlier on another thread:

"Let's assume, for the moment, that this story is factual and complete. If so, it illustrates one of the (many) problems with comprehensive electronic surveillance, combined with data mining -- False Positives.

If the DHS, FBI, etc. had prior reasonable cause to suspect this couple, and that caused them to check their Google searches -- then, those results might be considered evidence.

However, when you surveil everyone routinely, a large number of apparent hits will occur randomly. (Think of Google search topics as cards -- deal enough of them, and you will have a number of random "hits" of "hot" topics.) Anyone, who has studied (even somewhat) advanced statistics, will understand this problem quite well. Rather than using the data mining to confirm suspects -- they're using data mining to produce suspects. Given that there are probably a lot more people, who happen to search on two or more trigger words, than there are actual active terrorists, at any given time -- you are going to generate more false positives than real hits. A lot of innocent citizens are going to be treated like terrorists; because of this bass-ackwards way of collecting evidence."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3049950/posts

It seems that the story was not complete, nor completely accurate. However, the rest of what I said still applies.

In short: I agree with you.