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Comment by ianterrell | Hacker News Reader

That's your backtrack? That we don't know enough?

How is it OK that the local PD (acting as part of DoJ's Joint Terrorism Task Force) knows any factors that would reasonably lead them to investigate this family?

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Except the Atlantic Wire article states that both the FBI and the JTTF denied visiting the house.

FBI spokesperson Peter Donald confirmed The Guardian's report that the FBI was not involved in the visit itself. Asked if the FBI was involved in providing information that led to the visit, Donald replied that he could not answer the question at this point, as he didn't know.

We asked if the Suffolk and Nassau police, which The Guardian reported were the authorities that effected the raid, are part of the government's regional Joint Terrorism Task Force. They are, he replied, representing two of the 52 agencies that participate. He said that local police are often deputized federal marshals for that purpose — but that the JTTF "did not visit the residence." He later clarified: "Any officers, agents, or other representatives of the JTTF did not visit that location."

I believe in the literal truth of those statements.

I do not believe it to be likely that the local PD had evidence that would warrant a raid that they obtained on their own through normal local police procedures.

What's the reconciliation?

No, we don't know enough. What we know is that something here looks odd, and that warrants more investigation.

Perhaps this particular person was already under investigation for something else. We don't know.

I want to know more, but I'm reserving my outrage until more facts and confirmation come out.

I agree with sensible skepticism and reserving judgment to wait for more facts.[0]

tptacek, on the other hand, led with "I don't buy this, at all", and "if you're trying to sell a hoax", and many more sentences and comments that attack the author and the story.

([0]: The real life complication is that in most cases you will never get all the facts, and so reserving judgment forever ends up being the worst kind of inaction.)

I haven't backtracked an inch.

So you still "don't buy this, at all"? Despite a credible news organization's confirmation that the FBI was aware of a local PD's visit to this family?

The mind boggles.

All we know is that the local police visited her house. That is the entirety of what has been confirmed by The Guardian.

There is absolutely nothing with waiting for definitive evidence before making your mind up about something.

We know that the local police visited her house, and that the FBI knew about it.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable in trusting the author that the officers said they were with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is one of a few plausible ways the FBI would know about local PD activity.

Her credibility on the big fact is established. What are we missing, then? The details on what the questions were? Whether or not they were asked about their Google history? Where the intel came from?

For all we know, the FBI knew about it because so many people called them up to ask about it that they figured they'd call the local PD and ask them about it.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable in trusting the author that the officers said they were with the Joint Terrorism Task Force

From this WaPo article http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/01... :

“They were officers from the Nassau County Police Department who identified themselves as such,”

You might, justifiably, be suspicious of the police account. But all we have to go on are two contradicting accounts. Why not wait until we have some actual evidence?

What makes my mind boggle is that idea that people would rely on a single blog post to assume the conclusion that the FBI is dragnetting Google searches for lead generation for suspicionless searches.

No, wait, that doesn't boggle my mind at all.

Who said it was suspicionless? That's just the author's assertion. They could have been targeted for some other reason (the frequent overseas travel for example) and then the searches came up when they were already being targeted.

Does that make it better?

Yes that does make it better. If the FBI are calling around to people, purely based on google searches that's terrible. If they are calling around to people based on a whole pile of other things that might be suspicious that's much better.

Tptacek, it's called clustering and outlier detection. Look it up before you make a complete fool of yourself.

dyinglobster, it's called the Bayesian Base Rate Fallacy, and you just fell for it.

It's called common sense.

NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec1...

The Guardian quote is incredibly weaselly (when ellipses appear in a quote it's a good sign that liberties are being taken). The same person stated that no one from the JTTF visited her house in any capacity, which includes police involved in the same.

So thus far -- assuming that the police aren't lying -- we've gone from terrorism task force visit caused by Google searches (that they do "100s of", apparently), to maybe, possibly, some local police visited her for some reason.

"assuming that the police aren't lying "

Unfortunately, this is an awfully huge assumption to make!

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