Posted on 08/01/2013 9:40:07 AM PDT by kristinn
It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.
Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now. And in these times, when things like the Boston bombing happen, you spend a lot of time on the internet reading about it and, if you are my exceedingly curious news junkie of a twenty-ear-old son, you click a lot of links when you read the myriad of stories. You might just read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet and you will in all probability, if you are that kid, click the link provided.
Which might not raise any red flags. Because who wasn’t reading those stories? Who wasn’t clicking those links? But my son’s reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husband’s search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.
That’s how I imagine it played out, anyhow. Lots of bells and whistles and a crowd of task force workers huddled around a computer screen looking at our Google history.
This was weeks ago. I don’t know what took them so long to get here. Maybe they were waiting for some other devious Google search to show up but “what the hell do I do with quinoa” and “Is A-Rod suspended yet” didn’t fit into the equation so they just moved in based on those older searches.
I was at work when it happened. My husband called me as soon as it was over, almost laughing about it but I wasn’t joining in the laughter. His call left me shaken and anxious.
What happened was this: At about 9:00 am, my husband, who happened to be home yesterday, was sitting in the living room with our two dogs when he heard a couple of cars pull up outside. He looked out the window and saw three black SUVs in front of our house; two at the curb in front and one pulled up behind my husband’s Jeep in the driveway, as if to block him from leaving.
Six gentleman in casual clothes emerged from the vehicles and spread out as they walked toward the house, two toward the backyard on one side, two on the other side, two toward the front door.
A million things went through my husband’s head. None of which were right. He walked outside and the men greeted him by flashing badges. He could see they all had guns holstered in their waistbands.
“Are you [name redacted]?” one asked while glancing at a clipboard. He affirmed that was indeed him, and was asked if they could come in. Sure, he said.
They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search. They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.
Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.
They searched the backyard. They walked around the garage, as much as one could walk around a garage strewn with yardworking equipment and various junk. They went back in the house and asked more questions.
Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.
By this point they had realized they were not dealing with terrorists. They asked my husband about his work, his visits to South Korea and China. The tone was conversational.
They never asked to see the computers on which the searches were done. They never opened a drawer or a cabinet. They left two rooms unsearched. I guess we didn’t fit the exact profile they were looking for so they were just going through the motions.
They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.
45 minutes later, they shook my husband’s hand and left. That’s when he called me and relayed the story. That’s when I felt a sense of creeping dread take over. What else had I looked up? What kind of searches did I do that alone seemed innocent enough but put together could make someone suspicious? Were they judging me because my house was a mess (Oh my god, the joint terrorism task force was in my house and there were dirty dishes in my sink!). Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety. This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.
All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.
I’m scared. And not of the right things.
I had to laugh yesterday, when I saw an ad for electric pressure cookers on TV.
What would sound NON fabricated?
There are a kajillion ways that a motivated, evil person or group could use to create damage and chaos. However, the phenomenon of copycat crimes (or guerrilla attacks if you want to look at it that way) is also well known. This team looks like it is looking for copycats in the making. It’s already been revealed that our spooks are snarfing up all internet traffic. This is one result. This is also why it’s important to have people of integrity in these positions.
Doing an internet search and the feds show up? I can’t see it. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
LOL! But were there recipes for quinoa with it?
Read the account... there were multiple searches. Not “an internet search” (singular).
see link in post 60..I was skeptical too...
And, for more than one of the things that are on that copycat criminal watch list.
Now someone who wants to try to debunk this, is more than welcome to be a guinea pig. Go ahead and use Google or Bing in unencrypted mode to look for the various things that could be used to carry out the Nefarious Act Of The Week, as well as details about those Nefarious Acts themselves. If you go unmolested then you have a counter example.
Bump for later....
Still, there are probably billions of searches a day. They would have to pull searches by IP address, contact the ISP to get the router associated with the IP, figure out which userid owned the router and get a physical address. They would have to do this for every search with that pattern.
It is back to school and canning season. There would be thousands of these searches every day.
rather clear our Commander in Chief could not get a security clearance on ANY of those points
How could they with a straight face ask about someone’s membership in the Communist Party when Obama is in the White House?
You saw yourself that even the investigation team told them that they were finding 99% of the cases innocuous. No, they don’t bulk pull those extra identifying elements, they wait till they see the combination of searches they think suspicious then they pull the identifying elements.
Go ahead and be a guinea pig, if you dare....
After that post, maybe.
Here’s another problem. This gal is a writer and somewhat wise to the ways of the world so she immdiately puts this online- for countless reasons (good for her). HOWEVER- if they’re doing this roughly 100 times a month in that town, county or all of USA why haven’t the others gone public? Are they that intimidated by the authorities? That’s worrisome ... they’re thinking it’s no big deal..
Just so you know- if that ever happens to me I will be on FR asap talking about it.
“Never ever let the police conduct a search without a warrant”
They don’t need a warrant. They declare you a terrorist suspect and therefore don’t need one. That’s all perfectly legal due the “PATRIOT ACT”.
Using TOR or any other anonymizer makes you a terrorist suspect. The US gov operates the majority of TOR nodes. They know why. You might try, but you can’t hide.
Look on the bright side — they didn’t shoot their dogs.
These bombs have been used for years around the world, and our crack Secret Police never figured out they might be an issue until someone blew some up this year. People should think about that too. We have idiots “protecting” us, who can’t think of anything until AFTER it has blown up in this country.
Oh- and we do live in a police state now, it’s just most people don’t realize it. The noose tightens a bit every day. Doesn’t matter who is POTUS (although Obama is so much worse than most). We re doomed, no matter what. Look at the idiots in Congress...
This isn’t bad, either: https://duckduckgo.com/
>>>I smell a “Run the FBI Ragged with Google” protest campaign a comin’....<<<
Sounds like a great idea for a FReep!!!
I’ll be happy to start!!!
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