I'm shocked, just shocked, that this turned out not to be the FBI dragnetting Google searches.
Ever since Snowden (though also before) Hacker News has become increasingly irrational whenever it comes to anything involving "The Government", and I'm long past sick of it. Your post pointed out the logical impossibility of the original account being true, and everyone shot you down because they wanted it to be true.
Yes, there are very, extremely legitimate reasons to be concerned. But that doesn't mean we should abandon all logic and assume every story is true because it fits a narrative.
> CLARIFICATION AND UPDATE
> We found out through the Suffolk Police Department that the searches involved also things my husband looked up at his old job. We were not made aware of this at the time of questioning and were led to believe it was solely from searches from within our house.
The reason she thought "the Government" was monitoring her searches was because "the Government" told them they were looking at their searches. They clearly did not communicate that well, but I don't see how that's terribly irrational.
Everyone that does this is actually making things worse than they would've been otherwise, is actually creating the bullshit situation they're decrying.
Please, everyone, stop bringing in the stupid reddit comparisons.
I am not "bringing in stupid reddit comparisons," but wow, you are the most offensive person on this thread.
Anything that can further the growing mass of anger and resentment at the US military's illegal surveillance actions and resultant policy of dishonesty is beneficial to our ends.
You speak as if rational discourse is useless to your objective (as noble as it may be).
Publishing it in the first place may well be.
I think apathy overrides most of the benefits derived from rational discourse on the broader scale. In a limited forum such as HN, it's great.
When pushing the "the government is violating your rights and must be stopped" on a larger scale, factual precision becomes much less important.
The immediate goal is to generate as much general awareness and outrage as possible. Everything from the metadata vs content debate to service provider denials of data-sharing to Snowden's hot ex-girlfriend are distractions from that objective.
That original report has now been debunked. But it won't be retracted. Print a retraction and the NSA wins.
Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.
Nothing overt about USG watching Google's query IO. I don't think it's a stretch to confuse the FBI with the JTTF, nor that it's a huge leap between the efforts taken against her family and "someone [...] [piecing] together things people do on the internet." Everything she said happened, you just interpreted it incorrectly and started us down the wrong conversation.
Frankly, I think it's pretty telling that we're so on edge about how we are interpreting these findings.
Well, you might be. I just got bored of seeing the headline, which I dismissed as implausible immediately and didn't bother clicking on the linkbait. So I haven't been able to join in the circus act here on HN.
This is the part where she suggests the government is watching her entire family (herself, her husband and her son): "search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters." and "I imagine [...] Lots of bells and whistles and a crowd of task force workers huddled around a computer screen looking at our Google history."
"The Government" isn't spying on her to make sure she isn't a terrorist, the software an employer has to monitor the disclosure of trade secrets and disgruntled employees flagged risky behavior. The employer then contacted local police, who visited and did an amazingly lack-luster investigation of the situation (as she states in her story).
FWIW, she cross-posted to here http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/01-8 , and I don't see any significant changes.
Ergo, the author didn't have all of the information available when the article was written.
Shall I post a retraction with an equally misinformed slant, or can we agree that the wholesale collection of a great percentage of the electronic communications on Earth is an egregious breach of the public trust?
Yet, in light of the current situation, considering the hyperbole surrounding this issue, I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, whereas I am much less willing to grant the same amount of forgiveness to the US government.
The track record is not in the government's favor, unless you support the many questionably unconstitutional programs perpetuated by the US government, from seemingly innocuous "hoovering" of electronic communications the world over, to extra-judicial executions of Americans suspected of "terrorism," to endless proxy wars which only serve to enrich a few "vendors" while simultaneously depleting our national resources.
I refuse to adhere to the Bushism "yer either with us, or yer against us..."
It is not so cut & dried. Not so black & white.
It is possible to be anti terrorist while also being anti conflict proliferation.
Funny, if anyone expresses skepticism about that anti-government narrative then they are labeled as NSA shills - exactly as in "you are either with us or against us".
It seems the NSA is our new Area 51 and "JTTF" are the Men In Black. People want to believe. Much like alien UFOs were to secret spy planes, these fantastical claims coming out now are likely to the actual secret spy technologies. Great cover and distraction from what is actually being done.
And I think you're right about the second point. The hyperbolic conclusions people jump to about these stories are, effectively, ambit claims for the surveillance state.
HN is "tame" to say the least.
I anticipate any number of people will try to jump on the fact that the FBI didn't literally respond to a Facebook photo and have decided to simply quietly and not-so-quietly make fun of those people.
Here's my original post, which I stand by 1000% now, which is easy to do since it's been entirely vindicated:
Or, maybe it was because his corporate overlords at CBS, where he is a political correspondent (spit!) would have had him skinned if he wrote it on their masthead.
I thought that statement was irresponsible for a reporter to make in the face of so few verified facts about the incident or circumstances that preceded it.
Again: when someone writes something on their G+ page, it's hard to accuse them of not meeting journalistic standards; it's a G+ page. If McCullagh wanted that post to be on CNet, it would have been on CNet.
To say this is a hoax is to say these things did not happen. What is your evidence of this?
You are very clearly stating here "'the JTTF' didn't interrogate her husband", meaning that she is lying when she says they told her that or they told her that and were lying. Please cite your evidence of this claim.
Much the same as the way that governmental employment of mercenaries was once frowned upon, as well as conflicts of interest, which seem to have gained favor in the past 15 years or so.
This sounds to me like it's more a case of sour grapes on the part of the former employer than any sort of redemption for a government's overstepping its mandate.
"Government coverup to protect Google"
People will believe what they want to believe.
Google isn't the source of the abrogations of our civil rights, Google is merely the avenue by which the surveillance apparatus gains a toehold on a vast amount of data, be it meta, or otherwise.
Thus, my reference to a partnership with the government maintains some semblance of appropriateness.
This story directly ties into the Orwellian "See Something, Say Something" campaign initiated by the US government in the name of "the war on <some> terror."
When, exactly? What do you think that stuff about 'letters of Marque and Reprisal' in the Constitution refers to, if not Congress's ability to subcontract these things to the private sector?
That being said, you're coming across like an asshole gloating about taking the unpopular stand and being right.
Well, we don't know that for sure - they could have tipped off the employer, but that's too much speculation to be productive conversation.
So the original account was true, and it posed the question (or, demanded an explanation), how did the police know? Now we have our answer.
Edit: Wait, you're saying Declan's post was a joke? I didn't follow this one or the threads that closely after the initial read, so maybe I missed something. His reply to my earlier comment gave me the impression that was not a joke.
Pretty sure I was the opposite of wrong.
I also find it more than a little disingenuous that you included the "Well, we don't know that for sure - they could have tipped off the employer" line in there. Especially after attempting to invoke Occam's Razor. Yes, the NSA could have tipped off the employer to review an employee's searches and hope that they would then report it to the police. Of course, the police could have also seen the fireworks on Facebook, reported it to the NSA, who then planted the searches on the computer for the employer to find. We don't know for sure, after all!