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Comment by roc | Hacker News Reader

TFA: "They asked my husband about his work, his visits to South Korea and China"

I'd say the NSAs '3 steps' policy is far more likely. The husband interacts with someone overseas who interacts with someone else who is on a list somewhere. [1] The NSA does the routine profile on everyone within three steps of the-guy-on-the-list, some key words generate hits, salaried agents get another address to visit.

That possibility doesn't get hung up on the problematic notion that anyone's setting up such visits based on google searches alone, nor implies a JTTF agent caughed up real information on how they actually got their lead or why they were actually there.

[1] If you're doing business on the Chinese mainland, it seems pretty likely you'll be within three steps of 'potential terrorists', given the whole cyber cold war and economic espionage thing.

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I was disappointed that it took her 14 paragraphs to get to this. She starts "I was buying a pressure cooker and my husband was looking at backpacks" when she should have started "my husband makes frequent trips to China and Korea ..." Less frenzy that way I guess.

when she should have started "my husband makes frequent trips to China and Korea

Why is that? China is our second largest trading partner. Korea is our 7th. Is visiting countries that we do massive amounts of trade with suspicious?

> "Why is that?"

Mentioning the connection to foreign business casually, once, while spending the bulk of the 'story' hyping some implication that the government is profiling people based on web searches alone shows a tabloid-leaning lack of respect for the reader.

The writer's burying what should be a relevant example of "why even innocent people shouldn't like this NSA spying/profiling" (which we know to exist and know has policies that could likely result in their visit from the JTTF) under a largely-implausible theory (that has no substantiating evidence from any whistleblower or leak to date, nor does it present any) that ultimately serves no purpose but self-promotion.

(It looks like an attempt to make her experience the center of it's own story, as opposed to a contributing piece of the larger Snowden/NSA story.)

Truth and accuracy aside, why would her experience not be the center piece? I think the personal experience of 'everyday citizens' is enormously important in understanding issues of privacy and (self-)censorship.

In fact, highlighting the consequences for 'regular people' arguably contributes more to that understanding than the zillionth story about 'exceptions' like Assange/Snowden/RandomIranianBlogger. In the end those are (seen as) edge-cases.

Hackernews and other websites latching on to the 'technical' part of the story is understandable, but whether it was the quinoa or the pressure cooker or her husband's business dealings isn't the real subject of this story - the real insight provided by this story is the fact that she was left in a state of distress, leading to her questioning her every day communications/searches...

> "I think the personal experience of 'everyday citizens' is enormously important in understanding issues of privacy and (self-)censorship."

Which is what I said. "The writer's burying what should be a relevant example of "why even innocent people shouldn't like this NSA spying/profiling""

Her experience should be the center of her article. I'm talking about her pushing a silly theory that the NSA is doing a web search dragnet in an attempt to make her article the center of a fork from the larger story of NSA spying. And as the theory is generally silly, it simply distracts and detracts from the root NSA spying story, instead of reinforcing it and adding a direct human/emotional anchor for it.

The policy is not the issue. It's relevant to the story and she buried it to make her story fit a narrative.

Buried it? It's plain as day in her own story. Your characterization as "14 paragraphs" sure is dishonest considering the size of her "paragraphs" that are broken up only to make it more readable. Sure, it's not the headline but nor should it be. It's irrelevant if he travels to China or Korea. China and Korea are not equivalent to Afghanistan or Nigeria. And frankly even travel to those places shouldn't warrant a warrantless parade of police into your house.

Thousands if not millions of people make business visits to Asia - South Korea, Japan, China - every year. How it can be otherwise if most high-tech equipment used in the US is produced there? Are you saying it is completely normal for them to get a visit from the police and get questioned about their kitchen inventory, nothing out of the ordinary here?

"Potential terrorist" is a very vague term. Anybody who is alive and not brain-dead can be "potential terrorist". However I don't see how you explain the police asking questions about pressure cookers. Is that just a common thing - anybody that visits China gets a visit from the police that ask them if they make a pressure cooker bombs, just in case? Like the routine "How are you, sir? Is everything alright? How was your China trip? Did you make any pressure cooker bombs today? How about tomorrow? Good day to you, sir, then!".

"The NSA does the routine profile on everyone within three steps of the-guy-on-the-list, some key words generate hits, salaried agents get another address to visit."

By routine profile, I meant "of the data we all already know the NSA has access to, such as google search history/mail content/etc".

e.g. they may have been on an 'automated search' list for being at three-degrees-of-'terrorist'-kevin-bacon and then got on a 'physical visit' list for trips to china + a few keyword hits in the web activity logs. at which point it seems obvious they would ask about pressure cooker bombs, even though they weren't there just because someone had searched online for pressure cooker bombs.

Now, I'm certainly not defending the NSAs list-making justifications nor accuracy. The whole thing is bullshit.

But this story looks like a textbook use of the bullshit programs we (now/all) know about. And it gives us no reason to theorize the existence of some new (trivially unsustainable, useless) program.

Pressure cooker seems to be very specific topic. There are a real lot of ways to make bombs. Yet more to cause general havoc - terrorism doesn't have to be just with explosives. Yet the questioning, as reported, was very focused - which raises the suspicion that it was related to the other piece of information that was focused on the same topic.

As for if they got it from "old" or "new" NSA programs - I don't think anybody really cares at this stage. What one would care is if his next google search would lead to a 3am SWAT visit with flashbang grenades or just a friendly visit from a bunch of armed guys in SUVs. That's the worrying part, not the name of the program the government uses to make it happen.

Of course it's focused: they almost certainly used their web traffic to pre-screen.

We already know from the slides that they do searches of their ill-gotten web traffic against a laundry list of keywords. Probably, every single remotely terrorist-sounding keyword.

I'd imagine "Ruby Ridge" and "fertilizer bomb" and "jihad" are in there as well. But the agents only need to mention "pressure cooker bombs" because that's what they'd actually gotten hits on.

The question is whether it makes more sense for this visit to have been the result of google alone (unlikely-to-implausible) or was the result of being pre-targetted for other reasons, which then brought their web activity under scrutiny (which fits everything we already know about the NSA's processes and policies and the facts in this case).

Off topic: if Kevin Bacon ended up on a list of suspected terrorists....

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