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Comment by MrKurtz | Hacker News Reader

There is no actual proof that this was due to web searches, also the picture the atlantic is using is misleading and terrible, and the article was silently changed after someone else pointed that the alleged visit wasn't actually from the FBI but from local law enforcement:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police...

The story boils down to: "a lady claims to get a visit from the feds after googling some stuff".

She herself says that:

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. https://medium.com/something-like-falling/2e7d13e54724

This is lazy and exploitive reporting by all parties.

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No, the story doesn't boil down to "a lady claims". The fact that the Guardian followed up and confirmed that there was a visit is significant. That takes this out of la-la land.

The claim is that the visit was due to her googling, which isn't proven. I want them to investigate the actual reasons instead of dealing with hearsay.

There's more than one claim going on here. But I agree with you that that is the most significant one and that it isn't proven.

That claim has three parts:

- She was visited by government authorities.

- Those government authorities were federal agents.

- She was visited because of what she searched.

Of those three parts, the first was the only one confirmed (the second, I believe, was proved false.)

The second could be true, if the local police where deputized by the feds like they are when the act as part of the JTTF.

Yes, I'm sure if The Guardian simply asks the US government or local law enforcement why it targeted this family they will be very forthcoming.

Why not? are you satisfied with speculation as an alternative to the truth? is this an excuse to not even ask questions?

Are you satisfied that the federal government will tell the truth?

No one has even asked them! she should also FOIA this incident. My point is that it's all speculative at the moment.

I'll see you in 10 years when they get around to answering that FOIA...

You don't think The Guardian asked for a comment on her theory when they called? It's not as though the cops didn't get a chance to respond.

If that was the case they would have mentioned that they received a "no comment".

Agreed, but the event still happened. We need to know what triggered it.

Yes, someone should get to the bottom of this, but no one has, they are busy running speculative link bait.

Silently?

>Correction: After confirmation from the FBI that its agents weren't involved in the visit, the headline of this piece was changed to "Visit From the Cops" instead of "the Feds.

I'm not sure how the fact these guys were not FBI but local police makes anything better. Are the guns local police has less lethal? Is local police search somehow less invasive than same FBI search? Does the same questioning by local police sounds better than by FBI?

My point is to not take this story on face value, the details matter, and should be investigated.

This detail matters very little for the story - the issue is if government people investigated a family on suspicion of terrorism because they looked for kitchenware on the internet, not how the agency these people worked for is called. If they work for Department of Education SWAT team [1] it were as bad as if they worked for FBI. The problem is not that they didn't have the right badge but that they invade privacy for no good reason.

[1] yes, DoE has SWAT teams: http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept-of-education-swat-tea...

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