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Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

I just posted this on G+:

A Long Island woman named Michele Catalano posts photos of M-66 explosives (that look to me like extra-large firecrackers) publicly on Facebook. A few weeks later the local cops show up and ask her husband if they have any bomb-making equipment. Instead of drawing the most likely conclusion, she instead blames this on local Long Island cops MONITORING HER GOOGLE SEARCHES: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/FWAVRVaN...

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Of course we could expect this kind of behavior for you, as one of Hacker News' most notorious government apologists.

seriously irlollin'. :D

Touche! :)

According to the article they asked: Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? It's kind of a weird question to ask unless they knew about the google searches don't you think?

After the Boston bombing, if I were a cop being told "someone posted a photo of explosives on Facebook," I would absolutely ask about pressure cookers even on a routine visit. Just to see what their reaction is.

that's easy to say after the 'successfull inception' of it, but honestly, what you said it's pure-nonsense... just like kicking a ball the wrong way to then scream "I knew it was gonna happen!"

I wrote a column for many years called "Police Blotter" and have some familiarity with law enforcement investigative techniques. This is what happens in real life, not on HN.

Well, it is of course possible the question about "looking up pressure cooker bombs" came from thin air. Lucky coincidence. But, in light of the recent revelations, I think it is less probable than some NSA analyst flagging the terms "pressure cooker"+"backpack" and passing that info along to police departments. YMMV

Agitprop, regardless of validity, is useful if it achieves our ends.

You of all people know what a powerful adversary apathy is.

If lies were used to scare people into supporting these programs, they can be used to scare people into abolishing them.

Did you seriously just advocate intentional lying as a political device? That's a nasty road that ends in a dark place.

Darker than having the NSA collect a good portion of unencrypted internet traffic, and an unknown amount of traffic that was supposed to be secure in transit but might be obtained through back door deals with the service providers themselves? Darker than having a ton of laws nobody can follow and an increasingly militarized police force to enforce those laws?

I'm curious, what darkness do you see in ordinary citizens lying, or drawing unfounded connections between events, to try to shift the political system and social consciousness toward more freedom? Are you one of those people who views telling the absolute truth as a categorical imperative? How much of the anti-British rhetoric of pre-revolution United States (colonies) do you view as lies? A lot of political activity, advertising, and news involves lies of some type (omission, accidental lies, misleading statements... not just answering "yes" when you know the true answer is "no").

Yes, darker than those things. When the vector for change is lies, the party that lies most effectively wins. Guess what: that's not us.

Not lying won't keep the other side from lying.

The point of not lying isn't to make the other side not lie.

I refer you to the statements made by the DNI to Congress, or Obama to Charlie Rose.

Furthermore, the media concocts completely fabricated narrative hung upon zero to minimal facts all the time, to devastating effect. I refer you to the whole Snowden's girlfriend thing, or the Martin/Zimmerman thing, or the recent "google something and feds arrive" thing.

It's all made-up bullshit that people buy into en masse. It causes them to become so passionate about their adopted stance, even contrary factual data later will be ignored.

Public opinion _will_ be managed, and policy _will_ be changed as a result. This is the playing field we stand upon today, like it or not. (Personally, I hate it - but I do not deny the state of affairs.)

The enemy has demonstrated a willingness to lie endlessly to obtain and sustain illegal power over us.

The path is clear. I vastly prefer to be effective than unimpeachable.

> Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

The quote is from Göring at Nuremberg, but it holds true regardless.

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