Some of these keyword orders seem obscene in terms of how many people they target:
> ("fragmentation") AND ("bomb" OR "explosive" OR "ied" OR "explosion" OR "pipebomb" OR "pipe bomb" OR "PVC bomb")
> ("fragmentation") AND ("bomb" OR "explosive" OR "ied" OR "explosion" OR "pipebomb" OR "pipe bomb" OR "PVC bomb")
Yet every time something happens it seems like the suspect was on law enforcement's radar and they did nothing. Odd. Oh well, I'm sure a bigger data haystack to find needles in will solve that. /s
That seems a little tinfoil hat to me. Like there are government people with lots of time on their hands to chase leads on things that are not related to a case. OTOH there seems to be a lot of pre-emptive searching going on, particularly in the area of terrorism related activity. On the other other hand, in that case I think we want them to foil plots before they are enacted right? It seems to be a hard set of concerns to balance. We could opt for the most privacy oriented approach, but I don't think there's much public data on what the consequences of that would be in terms of bad things happening.
Of course Daily Mail stripped that context.
> The information requested in this Application is being sought by the FBI, in part, to establish who searched for the Google Search Terms between January 1, 2018 to March 2, 2018.
> While I believe that a pool of individuals searching for these bomb components or methods during the time frame prior to the explosions at the victim addresses will be limited, the pool of individuals will be minimal if limited to searches originating from Texas. By identifying the users of the Google accounts or IP addresses of the devices that searched Google for these terms and cross-referencing that data with other investigatory steps such as cellular telephone records, a suspect(s) or witness(es) may be identified.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21077351/google-keywo...
My concern is moreso with the courts at this point. Nothing stops the fbi from fabricating a crime or having an agent go undercover and post something potentially harmful which could could be used to obtain a warrant on these broad keywords.
Basically: wide keyword searches periodically with overlapping time frames gets you continuous data while making it seem just like a standard home depot purchase and video review warrant. I'll admit it's tin foil, but my default assumption these days is that the gov is already sniffing any and all data; their challenge comes in generating legal pretense for having it when they want to take action or get caught with it.