We Can All Resume Googling Backpacks And Pressure Cookers | Hacker News Reader

We Can All Resume Googling Backpacks And Pressure Cookers

outsidethebeltway.com

24 pointsluigi45 comments

There can't be many people that have at least searched for the anarchists cookbook at some time. The notion that the authorities now think it's ok to turn up at my doorstep for that is incredible. The language used is pretty chilling as well, apparently just searching for "bomb" is now an "incident". I'm also aware that I now have a little voice questioning whether or not I should post this comment...

Did you even read the article? The whole point is that isn't what happened.

Edit: Misunderstood the parent's comments. Yes, this is what happened.

> After interviewing the company representatives, Suffolk County Police Detectives visited the subject’s home to ask about the suspicious internet searches.

So they went to someone's house because of "suspicious internet searches". The fact that the search wasn't detected using an automated system doesn't diminish my point that they think it's ok to turn up on your doorstep if they don't like the searches you're making.

They received a tip form a employer that they discovered some suspicious searches on their former (fired?) employee's work computer. These sort of tips kind of have to be followed up on.

Seriously? Officials needs to follow up every time a company is pissed at the employee and they fire employee and that's not enough for them so lets report him/her on some "suspicious activity"?

I am not implying this happened here, but we don't know what's the story behind this guy being fired. There are remote chances that the company tried to be vicious with him after letting him go. It happened many times before.

This could be similar situation to the one where A starts beating B, out of nowhere, and then A calls cops before B had a chance to do so. Cops show up and A says: "look at my bruises" and B gets arrested.

Fine, but as law enforcement, if you receive a tip that someone is acting suspiciously, it is downright irresponsible for that tip to not be followed up on.

Sounds like the problem here was the employer, not the cops. Heck, it sounds like they didn't even have a warrant to search - they asked if they could come in and the person said yes.

I think the point is that this didn't used to constitute suspicious activity. The range of suspicious activity is growing and growing. Something that no one has really talked about yet is the effect recent revelations have had on the overton window (the narrow range of opinions the public will accept)[1]. Having such extreme behaviour exhibited by governments has the effect of making previously questionable policies seem more moderate and acceptable.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

We don't know the whole story, when the police interviewed the employers they may have described the employee as unstable or disgruntled which, with the internet searches, warranted a visit to the former employee. This story reminds me of a story by Adam Savage [1] where he was ordering a movie prop and received a call by the FBI and it was quickly dismissed but the agent still had to follow up the tip.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7I0...

I'm not so sure, really. If a reasonably well respected employer phoned in a tip about an employee looking up what they thought were terrorist-y things on a work computer (we'll never know what they actually phoned in, I'd love to know though!), I'd have expected that to generate an investigation for quite some time now.

The worst I can possibly think of to accuse the cops with in this case is showing up with too many people. One or two uniformed officers was all that was necessary.

I think this was a mostly appropriate response. In my opinion (and it wouldn't surprise me if this was the opinion of the law) police are obligated to follow up on more or less ever tip. I think if it had just been a couple of cops instead of the reported multitude, that would have been better.

The problem is people making bad tips to the police; if the intent is malicious, they should be prosecuted.

Exactly my point so what I want to see from Suffolk is their follow up and thorough investigation into said computer of fired employees and some hard proof of what they searched for.

> The notion that the authorities now think it's ok to turn up at my doorstep for that is incredible.

But this has always been true. If your neighbor gets robbed, you're going to get a knock on your door to see if you saw anything. They could stop by and ask for a glass of lemonade. Who cares? You seem to imply that there was some intimidation, but I read nothing to indicate that.

Cue the massive avalanche of 'I told you so' from all of the smart people on HN who were arguing that there was no way this was NSA related yesterday.

This cueing could get real meta, real fast. :)

Point taken though.

We already played this game yesterday evening:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6144294

Nobody was (or at least I wasn't) claiming 100% that this was the result of NSA spying. My big frustration was that in a matter of half an hour, 2 very viral denouncement posts appeared from honest-to-god journalists, basically belittling this woman's claims implying that she is an idiot, an attention whore or a hoaxer, without any additional facts or insights.

If anything it is a stark foreshadowing of how we will be shamed and mocked into the status quo not by our government but by our peers, eased into it like an old man gently lowering his body into an uncomfortably warm bath.

I'm confused by your point. Are you suggesting that we should assume everything we read is true until we have 'more facts' or 'additional insight'?

The reason her story was denounced by a few people is because those people had not let their ability to think critically be clouded by the current NSA/Snowden frenzy.

I think the point was that while skepticism is good, assuming the worst of someone is bad. It's not good to default to belief, but defaulting to abusive disbelief is also a problem. I think it is good to point out what we don't know and ask questions, but not to accuse someone of being a malicious liar. Give them the benefit of the doubt that they at least mean well, even if they are probably mistaken.

If we don't mock the hoaxers, we run the risk of genuine stories getting politely ignored along with the hoaxes.

Remember the story of the Child Who Cried Wolf.

It wasn't a hoax. She genuinely believed the visit resulted from her search.

Why must we either mock or promote it. Just look into it, settle what the truth is, and move on.

What if the child who cried wolf genuinely believed he'd seen wolves?

It's the same result in the end (no one believes you when it's most important), which is why it's necessary not to jump to conclusions that are not supported by evidence, especially conclusions that naturally mesh with your worldview.

"Jumping to conclusions" is a funny phrase to use. It seems to imply that there were actual conclusions being drawn out of the initial suspicions, instead of a "Hey let's look into this thing".

Now what if the child had cried wolf for the very first time and some of the villagers were all like "Shuttup you stupid kid, who do you think you are that the wolf would wanna eat you anyways! OOH LOOK THE WOLF IS GONNA EAT MEEEHHH! Stupid idiot."

Then once it was determined that there was no wolf, those same villagers proceeded to deride and mock the few people who actually tried to shine a light into the forest to see if there was a wolf in the first place: "I can't believe you fell for that you stupid idiots. Told ya there was no wolf!"

In conclusion, let's not allow our relationships and decisions rely TOO much on children's tales.

Years back an online friend coined Japhy's Law: the facts you most want to be true are those you should be most suspicious of.

I read this on my phone last night and was convinced it would have already been submitted to HN by the time I got to work. Sad to say I was wrong, but I'm glad someone mentioned it.

Here we have another win for tptacek in the "common sense and reason" column.

Not completely. He was quick to link alternate explanations that made equally little sense but didn't make it the result of NSA data mining - such as a picture of fireworks posted on facebook causing it all, despite the fact they showed up asking about pressure cookers. He was fighting a wave of people who were 100% certain it was the NSA, but still...

'Common Sense and Reason' belongs only to those who read the story and waited to hear more before posting. But I'm biased. :-D

Well that's the point, there were many alternative explanations of at least as much sense (however little sense they actually made) but people fixated on the one alternative explanation that conformed to their worldview.

I also didn't comment on the thread as I didn't know what exactly was going on. But I was very sure that it would be something along the lines of what tptacek himself predicted so why say anything anyways? I just upvoted and moved on.

Huh? I linked to Declan McCullagh's alternate (and more plausible) possibility. Nobody, including McCullagh, claimed to know for sure that that alternative was what happened. It's telling that you'd continue to make that argument --- noting that I was "quick to link to it" --- despite repeated clarifications from both me and McCullagh about the point of the link.

It was only more plausible if you believe they would see fireworks on facebook and show up asking about pressure cookers.

The fact was something in between, of course, it was computer searches but they weren't passed on from the NSA to some JTTF agents.

You mischaracterized my post. I've corrected you. The rest of the argument isn't interesting to me.

I corrected your assertion of 'more plausible'. Feel free to carry on, we're splitting some fairly meaningless hairs.

The difference between your correction and mine is that yours is a matter of opinion and mine one of fact; I did not, in fact, post the Facebook page story because I was certain it was correct, nor did its author write it because he thought it was correct.

The difference isn't meaningless; it's useful to spotlight point-scoring goalpost-moving when it occurs.

I don't care about points (this thread is off the front page, nobody paying attention here but me and you, maybe mpyne if he's bored), but linking to a laughable opinion about pictures of fireworks (sorry 'explosive devices') being the cause of the whole visit was enough to make me think you were linking to it because you agreed with it. Coming here and defending it as 'more plausible' when the evidence didn't match up bothered me enough to keep this going.

The bigger point is that the general public is starting to get worked up about this stuff - I could see lots of people retelling the "can you believe you can't google pressure cookers anymore?" story. Even though the NSA isn't related here people are starting to assume the worst. Hopefully this will start to make the general public more upset which is only way to ultimately change anything.

The general public will realize that these complaints are unfounded, because the most famous ones all turn our to be false, and starts trusting the government over the privact advocates. And maybe the general public is right... HN has gone from skeptic to full nutter over the NSA recently, accusing the NSA of doing excessively expensive and complicated secret projects for no benefit, not even their own benefit, and of ignoring cheap, easier, well-dcoumented, more obvious techniques to achieve the same results.

Here's the HN thread when the story was first posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6140545. Its fun/important to go back and do a little autopsy about the way things played out.

Ok, so, what IS the point of PRISM (or any other service monitoring Google or whatever company) then?

Do you have to search something like "I want to _____ (insert terrorist action) on _______ (insert date) at ______ (location)" in order to actually trigger something?

The point of PRISM is that if you already have a person of interest in mind, you can data mine within that persons's communications, likes, pages read, etc. to determine if he/she is actually being 'radicalized', or if they have connections to other people who are 'radicalized'.

From there you can determine "who's who in the zoo" of extremist cells for use in other intelligence collection schemes. E.g. if someone receives messages from known intermediaries of an AQ bomb makers and then 'drops off the grid' it may be a good time to step up to video/satellite surveillance.

Simply doing random searches isn't tracked by PRISM (though it might be from systems that use wiretap features). But even random searches like those are likely to simply be filtered out outright by the NSA, they are simply too common (even without pranksters who run the search thinking they're Sticking It to The Man) to be worth following up individually.

Even the NSA doesn't have infinite resources after all, and they are still dependent on other agencies for follow-up activities, and those other agencies are certainly more resource-constrained than NSA is.

Well it wasn't a PRISM program or anything, simply a company monitoring internal internet usage. This I understand and makes sense, although I don't think it warranted a call to police...

My company does the same thing, turns out one of the managers had been downloading porn onto their computer for months and the first time we installed it we noticed. When we checked out his computer he had over 200 Gb of the stuff... so yeah, he was fired, clearly he wasn't doing his job to the best of his performance.

I hate to be this guy, but knowing this [1] and this [2] and this [3], I think that news release from Suffolk Police is not sufficient enough. I mean there are bigger scandals full of lies coming from official officials, how can I be assured local Suffolk Police tells the truth?

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130611/11122823408/senato...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/obama-syria-cong...

[3] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/07/02/national-inte...

When authorities make small claims that make common sense, they require less discretion.

Common sense indicates that this was not part of a dragnet of people searching pressure cookers and backpacks. If it was: where are the reports of the certainly dozens (hundreds/thousands?) of people who have made similar searches?

Who are you to tell me it's okay to compromise my privacy?

The home owner voluntarily agreed to a search. Not sure what the privacy violation was... unless you think internet searches on your employer's network falls within your domain of privacy?

It it legally impossible to consent under duress. (for example, this is why rape is still illegal, even if she says "yes" after the perpetrator pistol-whips her.) No contract would be upheld if the court found out that one of the parties was weilding a gun during the negotiation.

The police have no right to "ask" you for permission to search your home, as there is an implied threat of deadly force. (Cf everybody who gets shot for flinching while in view of a cop.)

Sadly, the old white rich person judges pretend that this doesn't happen, and allow this unconstitutional activity to continue.

>The police have no right to "ask" you for permission to search your home, as there is an implied threat of deadly force.

If the police are asking instead of saying "we have a warrant" and kicking the door down, it's because they don't have the necessary evidence and are fishing for some.

There is no implied threat of anything to those with the slightest bit of knowledge of how law enforcement works. This whole story could have just as easily went the other way.

>May we come in?

>I'd rather you didn't. Do you have a warrant?

>No we do not. What do you have to hide?

>I would rather not speak with you any further until you both have a warrant and I have a lawyer present. Good day sir. door shut

Respectful, yet assertive.

What you do on your employer's computer on your employer's network isn't private. Maybe it should be, but we all know that it isn't. We may even have signed a form to that effect.

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