Google ‘pressure cooker,’ get a police visit? Maybe not.
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I'm not convinced we know any of the reasons for the visit yet, but it's fairly disingenuous to consider ANYTHING done on an online property, that you don't own, is not public.
I got the impression from the blog post that a son may have clicked on links possibly relating to how bombs are made. Perhaps the FBI were monitoring who clicks on those links, and then checked for further search activity etc.
I'm not suggesting any of this is warranted obviously (Terrorism isn't a real threat at all), but it does look like it was more than 'just' search terms.
or the FBI can access to police records when necessary, and sometimes checks said records when mass media indicts them in a conspiracy to harass pressure cooker enthusiasts. Of course, this explanation is far less exciting, but it is based on two assumptions we can be reasonably certain are true.
Now how does that sit with the theory Ms Catalano just might have been a little prone to exaggeration or jumping to the wrong conclusions about who was visiting her and why?
I wonder if the police misrepresented themselves.
“They were officers from the Nassau County Police Department who identified themselves as such,” said Kelly Langmesser, the FBI spokeswoman. But mysteriously, neither the Nassau nor Suffolk County Police would confirm their involvement in the investigation Thursday afternoon. An officer from the Nassau County Police repeatedly refused to even give her first name; a Public Information Officer in Suffolk County said she would comment when she had more information.
They aren't honest, they aren't trustworthy, they don't act in your interest... but they aren't juveniles either. They don't act like a bunch of out of control children on power-trips.
She searched for pressure cookers, and police came to her house asking her, among other things, whether they own pressure cookers and if they know how to make a bomb out of pressure cookers. Those are the facts.
Am I the only one who grew up with M-XX fireworks and loved using them for a couple weeks a year? Exploding mushrooms and dropping them down crawdad holes was the extent of my nefarious behavior...
Here's a good video of one of the fun ways to use M-66 firecrackers:
What a strange tactic to try and bring truth to a truly peculiar story by introducing another completely uninformed person's ramblings and insinuations.
Here are two facts:
1) She searched for pressure cookers
2) The police officer asked her if her and her husband own a pressure cooker and/or knew how to make a bomb with it
Trying to start a conversation around a picture of fireworks she had on her Facebook account posted on Independence day contributes EXACTLY ZERO to settling the 2 disturbing facts we are trying to consolidate.
"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
There is no proof it was a result of her searches.
Well in any case, at least we're back to the original claims so let's try and get to the bottom of it:
The police do what 100 time a week? Go to random houses and ask odd pressure cooker bomb related questions?
Again how is this statement supposed to do to dispel the original Google search = police visit suspicion. The cop probably doesn't want the suspected terrorist to get too jumpy. In any case.. who cares how the cop is trying to justify his strange visit to this particular household. He's certainly not going to explicitly say "Well we know you searched for pressure cookers so we wanted to see what that's all about". Or is that the kind of "proof" you're hoping to see here.
The goal here should be to try and verify the woman's claims. Not try and find 100 reasons to dismiss it in the fastest manner possible.
Evidently in Boston they do.
I agree completely, the goal is to verify the claims, and thankfully someone is trying to: http://twitter.com/kashhill
Some hysterical Facebook user saw that she had posted a picture of a bunch of fireworks (in classic statistical failings, so many are claiming that no one could possibly call in for hers given that there are many other pictures of fireworks on the tubes. Those people have no understanding of odds), and in the shadow of Boston felt that this was a critical thing to tell the police about. The police pretty much have to follow up on all such things, so they go and talk to them, again in the shadow of the Boston bombings, asking about Boston bombing type things (because street-level law enforcement is often looking backwards, assuming the same crimes are the new norm).
Yes, a picture of fireworks absolutely explains why they would ask about a pressure cooker. Whether she had previously been looking up pressure cookers or backpacks (if that is actually true at all) almost certainly has nothing to do with this, but she knew where to go with it for maximum interest.
Accurate. The word you are looking for is accurate. At the current time, we don't know why they visited her house for sure.
We don't know that she was asked about pressure cookers because she googled them. That's inference, not fact.
Above statement is 100% accurate... and completely and utterly stupid and most definitely not worth publishing.
Indeed you are accurate as well in saying that we do not know why they visited her house for sure. But publishing an article that adds a "maybe not" to the claimed series of events brings us no closer to finding that out.
In fact, your example touches on a larger point. An article like that about God would, if presented logically, have to conclude that there is insufficient evidence that God exists- all we have to go on are people's individual written accounts, and no hard evidence.
Compare that to this situation... where all we have is an individual written account and no hard evidence.
Fact 1) Woman claims she was visited by some type of joint task terrorist police force
Fact 2) She claims that they asked her husband about pressure cookers and whether they knew how to make a bomb with it
Fact 3) She claims to have searched for pressure cookers on Google earlier
Let's just try and verify if those facts are indeed true and/or related before hand-waving the whole thing off as a "Maybe not!" because there is no "hard evidence".. okay?
Anyway. You've just stated that we have three entirely unverified facts. How is "maybe, maybe not" the incorrect response to that?
Well, as long as we know that the NSA has installed hardware at their "partner" companies, the main questions about the degree of access to private user data seem answered to me.
The police look into leads all the time and a lot of them turn out to be people totally unrelated to the matter, or people that have actually done no wrong. But the police can't tell the future. They don't know ahead of time which tip is legit and which one is a dead end. They go down a few dead ends before finding the right one. Wouldn't it be nice if every thing was solved on the very first lead or inquiry.
> Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? … Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb?"
In what world does a police anti-terrorism task force coming in to your home and asking if your home cooking implements are to be used to make a bomb designed to kill and maim constitute "innocuous questions?"
That's certainly true for the educated readers/people.
It's a sad thing, but if you want to get real change, you're going to need the masses mobilized. Educated people already know about the current problems and a lot of them care and do want to take action - the thing is, we're a tiny minority.
In other words, the issue you are raising doesn't really need to be addressed, in the current situation - the more visibility for the main problem at stake, the better. Unless you work for the NSA, Google, Microsoft/Skype, Paltalk, AOL, and a ton of defense contractors etc., that is.
Going to have to disagree with you on that one.