Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks: Get a Visit From the Feds 923
An anonymous reader writes "Massachusetts resident Michele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which raises the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?"
How'd the government know what they were Googling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just glad the phrase "begs the question" wasn't used in this regard.
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Insightful)
You people really have too much time on your hands.
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure they are aware, of a a lot more things. Damn pressure cooker backpacks...
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, god. Now I really want to Google 'stewpit', but I'm worried it's some keyword for a terrorist cannibal org.
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you meant this as a joke, but the underlying punchline isn't funny.
It wasn't particularly funny 40 years ago either, but that didn't keep it from being a fairly common joke:
I think the major change is that we communicate in more ways than just the telephone nowadays, and the technical means to monitor those communications has gotten more pervasive and sophisticated... so more of our privacy is exposed.
Yeah. I'm not laughing either.
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:4, Funny)
You really need to ask this question? Or you just playing stewpit?
Honestly! Redundant questions like that really get me steamed up.
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Interesting)
We may know that the government was doing.
But the government has still never answered that question.
And therein lies the problem, in our Republic, there is an expectation that we the people know how our government operates. We aren't necessarily entitled to all the governments information, but full and complete information oh how our government runs is something a "free" country would be expected to know in detail.
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Insightful)
but full and complete information oh how our government runs is something a "free" country would be expected to know in detail.
Didn't you get the memo? On Sept 11th 2001 the US stopped being a "free" country and is now a "safe" country.
So shut up about your worthless "freedom" and "constitution" and "rights" you terrorist defending traitor!
Re:How'd the government know what they were Googli (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I got the memo, but too much of it was redacted to know what it said.... ;-)
Terrorist plot #57... (Score:5, Insightful)
From their employer, it sounds like (Score:5, Informative)
So it looks like this all may be an over-blown non-story.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/ [theatlanticwire.com]
Supposedly, the cops got a tip from their former employer that they'd found these searches and then went to investigate. If that is the case, well then it is pretty much a non-story. Some employers regularly do look at what is done on their computers because they are paranoid employees are wasting time, stealing, whatever.
Bush (Score:5, Funny)
If only we could get this Bush guy out of office this stuff wouldn't happen.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the statement "changing the puppet doesn't change the puppeteer" begs the question, "is the president a puppet under control of a puppeteer?" The statement begs that unanswered question by assuming the answer to be yes.
If the answer to that question is "yes," then we would raise the question, "who is the puppeteer?"
Re:Bush (Score:5, Informative)
You are employing the modern misuse of the phrase. It does not mean that a question "begs to be asked." Questions cannot beg.
But people can.
"Begging the question" essentially means you are begging the audience to grant you assumptions without requiring you to prove them (generally falsely).
If I were to argue, "To reduce crime we must build more prisons to lock up minorities," that statement begs several questions be answered in a way favorable to my argument, but that I have not proven. Are minorities committing crimes? Will building prisons to lock them up reduce this crime? I haven't proven those things, but I'm just skipping over that messy business and begging the audience to act as if those questions were asked and answered in favor of my argument.
It's basically how politicians speak at all times.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason American's don't do something about it is because the Lesters (aka, the puppeteer) only offer puppets in the general election that the Lesters have pre-approved. A candidate not meeting with the Lesters' approval never makes it to the ballot of a general election. Thus making the farce of a general election seem meaningful when in fact it is not.
As long as the population can be approximately 50/50 split over two parties (that both are attached to the puppeteer's strings) and political party fighting and mudslinging can be kept to a maximum over issues the Lesters don't care about, the populace will contentedly remain asleep and feel that they still have some actual power through the ballot box.
The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries.
I hope that answers your question. Sorry for not linking the Lesterland TED Talk video, but I'm sure you can google it.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries.
You've obviously never heard of The British East India Company [wikipedia.org].
Re:Bush (Score:5, Funny)
In short "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos"
Re:Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
"The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries."
The problem is not "both parties are the same team", nor "puppeteers giving false choices". Those are distractions.
The problem is that the U.S. system failed to account for parties. The fact that half of Congress is on a "team", in support or opposed to the President, causes them to vote pro-team instead of for the country or their constituents, which short-circuits the checks and balances that the division of government was meant to establish. This is compounded by first-past-the-post voting which by Duverger's Law guarantees a two-party system. Then voting game theory all but assures that those two parties will converge on certain key topics (like law enforcement and war, i.e., the important stuff).
Did the founding fathers foresee this problem? Definitely yes -- it's the whole point of Washington's Farewell Address, and it's eerily prescient. Countries with constitutions that admit to, and take into account, the presence of parties in politics don't have quite the same level of dysfunction that the U.S. does.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Informative)
The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries.
And the obvious counterexample to that claim is the East India Company, which was a global megacorporation of the 18th century. Recall that one of the defining events of the US revolution was the Boston Tea Party which was a protest against a tea tax and trade monopoly which was imposed to assist the East India Company. The tea that they happened to dump was East India tea.
And at the time, the East India Company had power far beyond any modern corporation or crime organization with a valuable opium trade with China (often illegally), a standing army in India, and considerable backing from the English government who saw them as a tool to increase English power in India and elsewhere.
So the founding fathers had a working example of such a global megacorporation in their time and had already crossed paths with it.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries.
--
BMO
Re:Bush (Score:4, Interesting)
John Adam's wrote about the role of government being to protect the property of the ownership class (paraphrasing).
That's all they've ever done, then gone and lied about it to the people. The Civil War was about economics, not slavery. Slavery was involved as an economic issue, not a human rights one, and the slaves were freed as a wartime tactic to cause problems within the South (and help get the generally pacifistic abolitionists in the North on board with the war). But, once we won the war for the rich white northerners, it became a war of liberation of the slaves.
A standing military benefits only the rich. If Mexico invaded tomorrow and took over the US, how do you think the lives of the homeless in San Francisco would change? Not a bit. How do you think the life of Bill Gates would change when Mexico nationalizes Microsoft and seizes his holdings? Yes, the middle class may see an effect, but not nearly as much as the elite asserts. The rich are the only ones benefiting from a standing military, and spend billions planting the idea that the poor should pay for it.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Informative)
While enshrining the right to vote solely in the hands of wealthy, white land owners
That's a crass, unfounded lie. They were protecting the right to vote for wealthy, white, land-owning males.
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
If you folks on the right had asked one of us *liberals* back in '08, we'd have told you Obama wasn't one of us. He's essentially what would have been a centrist Republican thirty years ago. These were people, like Bob Dole, that we liberals didn't agree with, but could respect and work with. In fact, "Obamacare" pretty much follows the private sector oriented reform plans of Bob Dole. If Obama were a liberal he'd have gone with single payer, and negotiated tough price concessions with pharmaceutical manufacturers (which is the source of America's runaway heath care spending). You'd have seen banks regulated or broken apart, and criminal investigations in response to the financial crisis of '08, not an attempt to put the system back together again the way it was before the crash.
In fact Obama is very much the kind of president Dole would have been: an economic pragmatist, a diplomatic multilateralist, and an aggressive user of military force where he perceives an imminent threat to national security.
If you want to stop state intrusion into private affairs, you've got to stop being afraid, and convince others around you to stop being afraid. The more fear there is in the political climate, the more impunity the government has in its actions.
Liberals got behind Obama in '08 for the same reason we got behind Obamacare: we backed the best alternative achievable in a climate of fear -- a climate, by the way, that makes the state internal security apparatus feel empowered to do anything it wants in the search for terrorists.
Re:Obummer the Messiah will save us! (Score:5, Insightful)
When will Americans get their heads out of their ass and accept that this is not about any single president? This is bigger than the President. It's bigger than either party. And it's not good for Americans regardless of their party, their gender, their age, their color...
When we use childish reasoning it allows the abuse to continue.
Re:Obummer the Messiah will save us! (Score:5, Interesting)
When will Americans get their heads out of their ass and accept that this is not about any single president? This is bigger than the President. It's bigger than either party. And it's not good for Americans regardless of their party, their gender, their age, their color...
What you have to be asking, is how do these spy agencies get a guy like Obama, who painted himself as the grand reformer, the president for the people, to jump in bed with them and defend them to the hilt?
Did they tell him: "We know what you did in Russia, Barry!"? Or did the intelligence community as a whole run this guy for president (twice) and make sure he won? How many ballot boxes did they stuff? How many electronic voting machines did they compromise?
And in light of their capabilities, how can we ever contemplate electronic voting in this country?
Re:Let it go, Dipshit... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're ALL Assclowns. And once they get inside the Beltway, the notional difference between Brand D and Brand R tends to fuzz out.
I like my plan, better: All Elected Officials serve two terms: the first in office, and the second in jail, based on what they did during the first. And no "country club prisons. . . "
Re:Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that people can criticize Obama without having wanted to vote for Romney, right? People can actually have views beyond that false dilemma.
Re:Bush (Score:4, Insightful)
It might be a false dichotomy, but it's not a false dilemma. All your choices are bad. Voting for someone who has no chance of getting enough votes to get into office might be more respectable, but it's still a bad choice too. That is, unless you're going by the original Greek roots and that saying dilemma means there are only two choices. That's not really the current meaning in English, though.
Refuse the search? (Score:5, Insightful)
This raises another question. What happens when these people refuse to answer questions or allow a search of their home?
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Funny)
This is why I always answer the door wearing a balaclava.
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Funny)
This is why I always answer the door wearing a balaclava.
Answer the door eating baclava too if you want to get a real reaction.
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Funny)
I had to look up balaclava on Google -- hmm, someone banging on my door
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Interesting)
Those people will turn out to be <adjective>-wing domestic terrorists, who were also <group which is politically acceptible to revile>. When the police arrived for a routine investigation the terrorists shot their own dogs and then comitted suicide by shooting themselves in the back on their heads. Twice.
At least, that's what will happen as far as you'll be told.
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh, madlibs!
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Informative)
This raises another question. What happens when these people refuse to answer questions or allow a search of their home?
IANAL, but I've done quite a bit of reading about this topic. The rule (at least in the US) is very simple: You are not required, nor should you allow any law enforcement officer into your home or business without a search warrant. Needless to say, you should not be talking to them at the front door either. They are not going to bust your door down, and it's likely they will not return.
Keep in mind that you should never talk to a federal agent without your attorney's advice. The reason? It is a federal crime to lie to a federal agent, and there are many cases of people being charged with lying rather than the original crime for which they were being investigated.
Don't take my word for it. Read the words of a former government attorney [gunowners.com] (scroll down to "The Raid"). There are any number of good articles and videos authored by attorneys. Here's another one [publiceye.org] that's worth a read.
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Insightful)
"You are not required, nor should you allow any law enforcement officer into your home or business without a search warrant."
And just how difficult is it these days for the Feds to get a search warrant from the invisible national security legal system?
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's interesting that they talked to the people at all, even though they showed up looking like they weren't there to talk.
I just rewatched War Games the other day and had to laugh at the way the FBI was portrayed apprehending Broderick. They were supposed to look all intimidating, but they seemed so polite compared to how such an operation would go down today. His dog survived the operation, his parents weren't pissing themselves on the floor at gunpoint, there was no profanity yelled at anyone. And he was a national security threat.
Ah, those were such civilized times.
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most people have a sense of 'justice' that is little more than a polite cover for the urge to see criminals tortured. They'll support just about any abuse of police power, so long as it isn't directed at them.
Re:Refuse the search? (Score:5, Informative)
Lawyers have repeatedly told me (1) never talk to the cops unless you have a lawyer. (2) Never give them permission to enter your home without a warrant. (3) Never give them permission to search your home without a warrant.
Once they get inside your home, they can look around and possibly find something illegal.
The husband's answer should have been, "Give me your business card and I'll get back to you after I've talked to a lawyer."
Yes, it's tempting to get rid of them by explaining that you're not doing anything wrong.
But a lot of people who didn't think they were doing anything wrong have wound up in jail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_C._Butler [wikipedia.org]
Let's all Google together. (Score:5, Insightful)
We should all Google 'pressure cooker' and 'backpacks'. Let's send them for a spin.
Re: (Score:3)
that sound like a good idea maybe we should all make pressure cooker and backpack our sig
BAD article, better source, and other notes... (Score:5, Informative)
The Atlantic article is BAD. Not only is it a summary with no additional information (and information removed), but uses a bad and unrelated photograph!
Read the original article on Medium [medium.com], and I strongly suggest that a Slashdot editor change the article link.
Although circumstantial, this implies one of two possibilities. Either Google is voluntarily looking for "suspicious" searches and reporting them to law enforcement, or law enforcement (using a warrant, a wiretap, a NSL, or similar) is either forcing Google to look for such suspicious searches or simply wiretapping Google.
Re:BAD article, better source, and other notes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shame on her husband for allowing jack booted thugs into their home. Never consent to a search, and never speak to the police, except to assert your right to remain silent and request a lawyer. Every citizen who consents to these searches encourages them to do more.
Re:BAD article, better source, and other notes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't jump to conclusions, remember, that's how innocent people started getting harassed when Reddit 'found' the marathon bomber.
Re:BAD article, better source, and other notes... (Score:5, Informative)
An FBI spokesman confirmed the Guardian's report [theguardian.com].
They can't get all of us (Score:5, Funny)
Seems obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
See, "metadata" is a slippery term.
Go ahead and do an innocuous google search. Once the results show up, take a look at the URL you've accessed.
There it is: your search terms right there, (in human-readable format, even) in the URL itself. Is a URL metadata? I'm sure the NSA would say "yes"
So, Google doesn't need to be complicit in any way. This is all unencrypted stuff that could easily be filtered and could theoretically be defended as being "metadata"
Kinda makes me wonder what else you might call metadata. Are the SMS messages that piggyback on phone packets metadata? (I'll admit I don't really know anything about that so this is just speculation)
I'd be very interested in other people's opinions on things we think of as communications content that could be argued as being metadata. Thoughts?
Using google... (Score:3)
That being said, will the feds come get me if I am sending a short story about an assassination?
A habit that I have gotten into a while back though, so as to not tie my searches in with my gmail, is that I use firefox for gmail and I use Opera in private browsing to search google. After reading this article, I realize that I am probably tracked via IP. This is disheartening.
It's time to invest in an anonymous proxy. I think I am going to start with this article [torrentfreak.com] then investigate further.
I know what I am doing when I get home (Score:5, Funny)
$i = 0
while $i = 0
wget ”http://www.google.com/search?q=Pressure+Cooker"
wget ”http://www.google.com/search?q=backpack"
'Nuff Said
Re:I know what I am doing when I get home (Score:5, Insightful)
$i = 0
while $i = 0
wget ”http://www.google.com/search?q=Pressure+Cooker"
wget ”http://www.google.com/search?q=backpack"
'Nuff Said
When I see an angry dog, I like to poke at it with a stick, too. Rational things happen every time!
Re:I know what I am doing when I get home (Score:4, Informative)
has been happening for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
This happened about three years ago.
Re:has been happening for a while (Score:5, Informative)
This needs to stop.
When they come to your house you tell them to fuck off and come back with a warrant. Cooperating only encourages them.
Re:has been happening for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
United Stasi of America. It's here. X-Keyscore proves it can't be avoided almost in any way.
Full take of all of the data is constantly analyzed. By now the responsibility must have been given to a faceless algorithm, so there is no one to sue, no one to accuse. People around the machine are just supporting staff, like those working at the concentration camps - who just followed their orders given by the machine.
Re:has been happening for a while (Score:4, Informative)
Re:has been happening for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly does it mean to have a right if the government can punish you for exercising it?
Re:has been happening for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing all terr'ists is dum, rite? (Score:5, Interesting)
I, uh, don't really think we have all that much doubt about that one anymore.
As the better question - Do the wardens of our panopticon really consider the terrorists that stupid, that they would A) try the same attack again, and B) really need to Google the concept of a backpack?
Always preventing the last attack (Score:5, Insightful)
Do the wardens of our panopticon really consider the terrorists that stupid, that they would A) try the same attack again, and B) really need to Google the concept of a backpack?
That's the problem. One of the truisms in the armed forces is that the generals are always fighting the last war. Similarly, our anti-terrorism forces are always trying to prevent the last attack. Thanks to the Unabomber, we still can't mail packages bigger than 16 ounces unless we do it in person. Thanks to the shoe-bomber, we have to take off our shoes when we go through the metal detector at the airport. Now we can't Google for pressure cookers and backpacks. Fer Crissakes.
God forbid that some clever terrorists decide to Google for suspicious terms, with the intent of luring anti-terrorism forces into an ambush. I wonder how our somewhat dim and reactionary anti-terrorism forces would deal with that. Good thing that the average jihadist is too stupid to play that type of chess.
And to think I was turned down for an Army info-sec position...I have exactly the sort of devious mind it takes to stay several steps ahead of the bad guys. Sadly, they prefer people with "N years of experience in this field, N years of experience in that field"...sigh.
And the worst thing about this...it means that the terrorists have won. They never claimed to be able to destroy our country, or overwhelm us in a military sense...they said they wanted to destroy our way of life. Well, our freedom has been replaced with a paranoid, reactionary, technologically-supercharged fascist surveillance state. The terrorists didn't even have to impose it; the western world imposed it on themselves. Somewhere, two guys with a lot of Mohammeds in their name are toasting the defeat of their enemy.
This guy has standing to sue (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the big problems the EFF has had suing the NSA is that of "standing" - they have a hard time showing actual harm. This guy has standing to sue. He can show actual harm from unauthorized surveillance.
Re:This guy has standing to sue (Score:4, Interesting)
they have a hard time showing actual harm.
Which is what I don't understand. Why is that necessary? Is the existence of blatantly unconstitutional practices not harm enough for them, or do they like giving the government yet another reason to keep everything secret? Oh, who am I kidding? The answer is obvious...
No, they'll have to sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is what I don't understand. Why is that necessary? Is the existence of blatantly unconstitutional practices not harm enough for them, or do they like giving the government yet another reason to keep everything secret?
Unfortunately, our system isn't based on common sense, or even passing the giggle test. All our system offers is the chance to take them to court. And our courts aren't impartial arbiters of facts; a trial is more like a poorly-produced stage play.
But this is supposed to be better than the alternative.
Re:This guy has standing to sue (Score:5, Insightful)
It's to stop people from clogging the courts in protest. It'd be really annoying if the government passed a law of slightly dubious validity and a thousand activists decided to file suit against it. With so many cases going on at once, it's inevitable courts would issue conflicting orders. While such a process could be used to stop unconstitutional laws, it could also be used to stall laws that are perfectly valid but have a dedicated opposition.
Proof! (Score:5, Funny)
One thing the article skipped for criteria (Score:4, Informative)
In the middle of the article, you'll see that the husband also had trips to China and South Korea, so the trigger was more than just searching for backbacks and pressure cookers.
Re:So no-one should ever investigate anything (Score:5, Insightful)
A) (The number of pressure cooker bombs made) / (the number of pressure cookers sold) is virtually 0.
B) (The number of backpacks used to bomb something) / (the number of backpacks sold) is virtually 0.
Even taking A and B together, (the number of pressure cooker bombs transported in backpacks) / (the number of people who own both pressure cookers and backpacks) is virtually 0.
A and B are meaningless. Worse than meaningless, they waste resources that could be put toward investigating real threats.
C) With all the news about pressure cooker bombs, there are lots of people, in the 10s of millions, who have searched for what a pressure cooker bomb is, myself included.
D) Lots of people travel. Neither China nor S. Korea are hotbeds of terrorist activity. N. Korea is all but impossible to enter from either of those countries.
And for gods sake, most importantly, absolutely none of this should have been known by any law enforcement agency because they had no probable cause to start an investigation in the first place. There is a serious problem when everyone American citizen's internet activity and travel history are being constantly monitored.
Well if you've nothing to hide... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another reason why I hate the, "if you've nothing to hide" nonsense. In the past year, I've bought a pressure cooker, large capacity backpacks, fairly sizable quantities of pure sodium hydroxide (more, anyway, than one needs to unclog the drain), soldering irons and other equipment to work on electronics, numerous tanks of propane, gun powder, and we go to shops and run in social circles frequented by Arabic speakers. Why? Because, respectively, we (my wife and I) have a garden and can vegetables, we like to go hiking, we make our own soap and detergent, I like to fool around with electronics for fun, we use propane to heat our kettles while brewing beer, I hunt with a muzzle-loader, and as Orthodox Christians a great many of our coreligionists are Palestinian or Lebanese.
Of course the protectionist or supporter of the national security state will say, "See, you had nothing to hide. No big deal." But that's just the point. With enough information on people's activities, even the innocent ones can be construed as potentially dangerous. With enough information, anyone and everyone becomes a suspect. To say nothing of the fact that this subjects people to unreasonable searches, it lessens the chances of actually finding a legitimate focus for suspicion.
Re:Well if you've nothing to hide... (Score:5, Interesting)
Partly because we like to avoid the shear quantity of unknown components that go into most industrial goods. Soaps and lotions, for example, often have chemicals like parabens in them which can mimic estrogens. The jury's still out on whether exposure to these leads to higher incidences of cancers, etc., but we don't really care to be part of this over-sized experiment to which industry has managed to subject us all. We don't go all organic and avoid all industrial products--indeed we're unable to do so as we don't have the capital to do so. But we do what we can, where we can.
Partly because we have an interest in old traditions and dying arts. My wife is a weaver and a spinner by trade and I often at least try the older methods when I do something (thus e.g. making my own bows for archery, mixing egg tempura for when I paint, or learning to build fire with flint and steel). Even if one decides that modern methods are more convenient, doing things the older way can give a better since of quality in goods and what goes into them than one would otherwise have. At one point, my wife decided to give soap-making a try and it just stuck. It was easy enough and gave her enough control over the product (using different fats, applying different scents from the garden and elsewhere) that she found she preferred this over buying soap. I might also add that it's cheaper.
Above all because we don't want to be like Arthur Dent who, during his sojourn on Lamuella, assumed that as a modern man he would be able to introduce to the primitive natives a great many modern conveniences. Then he realized that he actually didn't know how to do or make much of anything. Fortunately for him, he still fared well as the sandwich maker.
Broke the law, go to jail? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now we have had various ample proof that parts of the government are exceeding their power, that they are literally breaking laws, and even the checks and balances of our system do nothing to detect and correct, often times due to collusion or tacit approval . [cnn.com] We have whistleblowers pointing out these abuses, and they're to be prosecuted, and while people may cheer for them and call them heroes, little else seems to be happening. There are more protests and support rallies for these folks in foreign lands than here in the US.
It's not even complex: Parts of the government have been knowingly breaking the laws that they themselves were supposed to protect and enforce, yet they have not been put in jail, or even brought to trial. Nothing appears like it will change.
I hate to sound all tin-foil-hat-infowars-crazy, but at the point where the government decides it doesn't have to follow the law, and can do anything it wants - without even a hand-waving distraction, it's not a democracy or republic - it's authoritarian leaning towards totalitarianism. Laws were broken. Someone, perhaps whole groups of someone, need to go to jail. Claiming that it's okay because a law is open to interpretation, without question, by a government body not privileged with the power of interpreting law, and then further masking it with secrecy in part to hide the legality is right out! That's not a senate committee issue. It's black and white - trial time. If the president says he knew and explicitly approved, it's also impeachment time, followed by jail time. This isn't getting a hummer in the oval office level stuff, this is beyond Nixon-level stuff.
People turned out in the thousands for the OWS, and they didn't even have a good argument, much less any sort of attempt at a solution. Where are the thousands for this?
Re:Broke the law, go to jail? (Score:4, Interesting)
Taking an extra shift at their third part-time job, trying to pay down student loans. One has to wonder how much the bad economy is covering for the growth of the national security state, since folks are doubtless expending most of their political concerns over how to stay afloat financially for the next year.
Not necessarily flagged from their Google Searches (Score:4, Informative)
Missing from the summary, of course, is that the family had a son who has actually clicked on a link to an artlcle on how to make a pressure cooker bomb.
"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."
Google may not have been involved at all here. All the investigators needed were the logs for the website hosting the offending article, and a cooperating ISP, to find that family.
Re:Not necessarily flagged from their Google Searc (Score:4, Interesting)
The subplot about the son is missing not just from the summary, but from The Atlantic article as well.
Where did you get this quote? Or are you just trolling?
Re:Not necessarily flagged from their Google Searc (Score:4, Informative)
The blog does NOT say the son searched for instructions on how to build a bomb. Here it is:
"
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 âoethese timesâ 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-year-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 wasnâ(TM)t reading those stories? Who wasnâ(TM)t clicking those links? But my son's reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husbandâ(TM)s search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.
Thatâ(TM)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.
"
She assumes her son could have clicked on a link. But she does *not* say he did, contrary to your claim.
Cops? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nature of the Internet: Information exploitation (Score:5, Informative)
A former buddy of mine at 'the fort' (cough) once said information wants to be free.
Having worked not soley at the fort (like my buddy) but at SV companies to launching rockets, I found that his assertion was not true, but that information wants to be exploited. It's already free if you search "the right way" (as mentioned by another buddy at the 'other' agency).
Hence, How'd the government know what they were Googling?"
Easy. Just like every other company that does ads, they buy the info from Google.
Of course, once weak selectors have triggered from the google data, the gov't has other systems (e.g. let's say telco info) to get the location and possibly user of the IP address that google recorded. It's what's been known in all market analysis and the hollywood industry for awhile: federated metadata search. Big Data Analytics is the buzz word for it nowadays. Nothing new here.
Now what do we get out of this? That being anonymous is NOT anonymous anymore. We've hit the Uncertainty Principle in information sharing: if you touch "the system", you're identified. Period. Much like if you measure it, you effect the results [wikipedia.org]. So to the tinfoil hat folks, either stay under your rock or quit complaining and 'work' the system (aka opt in or opt out).
Lastly, the Gov't takes actions that are threatening, where as the credit card companies do the exact same pattern matching, and take similar actions, of course less threatening to you by context. Think about it and you'd be more surprised if the gov't wasn't doing this in the 1st place.
Inflamitory reporting (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at the picture in the article and compare it with the actual description of what happened;
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.
There was no assault team. The wife and children were not present. The picture make it look like the police terrorized an innocent family when the truth is far different.
I hate inflammatory reporting and this is a prime example of it. The story is bad enough as it is without adding falsehoods.
Oblig XKCD (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't believe that nobody has linked this yet:
What's the worst thing that can happen if you misuse a pressure cooker in an ordinary kitchen? [xkcd.com]
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that google.com defaults to https. So whoever was wiresharking had Google's SSL key or some other kind of inside access.
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Informative)
With ease?
Are u sure u know how all this works?
There's nothing simple about intercepting client server anonymous traffic on the net. Much less the scope of the data that google processes. Also ssl doesn't matter if google is forking over the data internally.
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Informative)
Or if you use the proper extension [eff.org].
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Funny)
.I thought it was common knowledge that the search engines and the feds are all buddy buddy?
But, but...the NSA head and several Congressmen have assured us that they aren't blanket monitoring everyone. And surely they wouldn't lie!
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The check is in the mail.
2. Trust me, I'm a Lawyer.
3. You won't get pregnant, really.
4. The NSA is not blanket monitoring everyone.
These 4 statements have something in common. We leave determining what that is, as an exercise for the alert mind. . .
Re:Wireshark (Score:4, Insightful)
So once again we have the government wasting huge piles of money and infringing the rights and privacy of everyone for a program that won't work...
The problem here is your definition of "working", in this context. You appear to believe them when they say the system is meant to catch terrorists, rather than monitor & control the general population, including congressmen and other politicians, judges, etc.
It's working just fine.
Strat
Re:Wireshark (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you guys not been following US news for the last two months?
Re:Wireshark (Score:4, Informative)
How ironic it is to see the first post under "You may like to read:" be DuckDuckGo: Illusion of Privacy [slashdot.org]...
Remember:
Knowledge is power, but he who controls the information reigns supreme. --Hackers Creed
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it because the US government TLA brigade is staffed by hyper-paranoid assclowns that frequently drop the ball when it comes to making use of the illegal intelligence they happen upon?
Yes - and skipping all the intelligence they have legally.
Besides, if you're into camping and canning foods you're obviously an insurgent, right?
funnily enough two of the task force should have raided themselves. I think the problem is that you have such a task force ready to go with nothing to do all fucking year long, so they claim to do 100 raids a WEEK and that once a week(1%) they caught something. why is none of those ever reported?
warrant isn't mentioned in the article either, not for getting the data and not for performing the raid(which they i think claim was "consentual", but what the fuck do you expect people to do if you come up geared for a war and want in..)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
warrant isn't mentioned in the article either, not for getting the data and not for performing the raid(which they i think claim was "consentual", but what the fuck do you expect people to do if you come up geared for a war and want in..)
Imagine: "Sir, do you consent to a search where we poke and prod around your house and not damage anything, or will you force us to get a warrant and we can completely destroy your house during the 'search'?"
Hint: Courts have ruled that damage done under a search warrant is generally not compensated.
There have been cases where officers "looking for drugs" will damage homes to the point where they are uninhabitable, but the courts rule the individual must pay for the damage. Police performing a "search" can destroy just about any property they want. Smashing vases and poking holes in drywall as part of the "search" are generally considered legal. The police can even burn down your house an not pay you for it (see Patel v US and many other cases).
It has gotten to the point that "inverse condemnation" via police action is now a thing. Police and other government agents so greatly damage the property that it is the equivalent of condemnation.
No, you really don't want them force to get a warrant if they already don't like you.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
But in this case, they couldn't get a (regular) warrant. There is no probable cause. The only power they have is the threat of a warrant. Unless secret warrants are easier to get.
Re:Was local police, not Feds. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh well just the local police, that's fine then.
[/sarcasm]
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Interesting)
The good news is, they only inspect the contents if they think you're a terrorist. The bad news, they think about 300 million of us are terrorists!
Re:Wait a second... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. They record your phone call, make a text transcription and then discard the recording (unless you're on a special watchlist or trip any red flags). The text is just the metadata!
Re:It has been known for years (Score:4, Interesting)
The remarkable thing is that they've never come knocking on my door, given how many times (as part of research for my novels) I've searched for all manner of bomb-making chemistry, information about types of firearms, information about poisons, etc. I guess when they saw me use a planetary orbit calculator to compute precise positions of planets several hundred years in the future, they concluded that I wasn't dangerous, just seriously OCD. :-D
Google as it used to be (Score:4, Informative)
Google doesn't even have a truly working syntax, any more. You can try and force specific phrase searches all you want and the "AI" or whatever they're using goes out and grabs "similar" terms anyways, to add unnecessary things to your results. You can exclude certain phrases or words all you want BUT if they are one of the "similar" terms to something else you're searching for, they will still show up. Google is totally broken with all of its "smart"-ness!
This is not entirely true. On a search results page, you can click on "Search Tools" and then change the middle dropdown from "All Results" to "Verbatim". This makes Google work much the way it used to in the Good Old Days(tm).