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Comment by Dirlewanger | Hacker News Reader

Instead of drawing the most likely conclusion, she instead blames this on local Long Island cops MONITORING HER GOOGLE SEARCHES.

Any hard sources on this besides this guy blabbing off and making more drama?

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This M. L. Hunt person in his comments writes a very reasonable response:

"+Declan McCullagh In her account she mentions the cops specifically asking her husband if they have a pressure cooker. Assuming that is true, where do you think they got that idea from? Besides, how many millions of people do you think posted pictures of fireworks, even relatively powerful ones like M-66s, around 04July? What do you think made Ms. Catalano's photo(s?) particularly worthy of follow-up?

It seems to me you are bending over backwards to make this story seem less worrisome than it is. But like others who have replied to your post, I don't find a whole lot of comfort in your alternate scenario even if it turns out to be more in line with what actually happened.

But anyway, you're a journalist, aren't you? Do you have any plans to try to get to the bottom of what actually happened here? Or do you just plan to stand on the sidelines and try to pooh-pooh the whole thing?"

To which good ol' Declan responds: "Alas, I'm working on an unrelated story today."

Well that settles that.

Asking about pressure cookers is probably a standard question these days, for obvious reasons. It doesn't mean they were monitoring Google searches.

Bullshit. A pressure cooker is probably one of the most common kitchen accessories ever. Anyone who planned to use one for malicious intent would just deny that they have one.

So are a bunch of other materials used in household bomb-making. Doesn't preclude the cops from asking about them, especially if you got flagged as a potential bomb-maker because you posted about explosives on Facebook or something.

cops also ask you if you have drugs in your car.

I'm sorry I can't tell if your response is written in a joking manner or if you are serious but while reading it I got this funny visual of a cop responding to a routine noise disturbance by asking the offending homeowner "any pressure cookers in the house?"

i am not joking

It's also true. Check out news.com tomorrow morning.

You say that as if I was conspiratorially doubting the fact that you are working on another story.

Poor diversion from M.L. Hunt's point that as a professional journalist you should certainly recognize that there is nothing in your rhetoric that somehow undermines the original claims of an internet search possibly triggering a police visit. You are just fanning the smoke into another direction, for what purpose I don't know. As you mentioned already, shouldn't you be writing another article instead of spending time posting and responding to comments on a story you have absolutely no relevant information about?

If you don't think the Facebook post was relevant, I feel sorry for you.

But you're right, I should be writing the other article.

And that article is published and is being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6149393

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