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Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks: Get a Visit From the Feds
An anonymous reader writes "Massachusetts resident Michele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which raises the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?"
The Atlantic article is BAD. Not only is it a summary with no additional information (and information removed), but uses a bad and unrelated photograph!
Read the original article on Medium, and I strongly suggest that a Slashdot editor change the article link.
Although circumstantial, this implies one of two possibilities. Either Google is voluntarily looking for "suspicious" searches and reporting them to law enforcement, or law enforcement (using a warrant, a wiretap, a NSL, or similar) is either forcing Google to look for such suspicious searches or simply wiretapping Google.
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This needs to stop.
When they come to your house you tell them to fuck off and come back with a warrant. Cooperating only encourages them.
With ease?
Are u sure u know how all this works?
There's nothing simple about intercepting client server anonymous traffic on the net. Much less the scope of the data that google processes. Also ssl doesn't matter if google is forking over the data internally.
This raises another question. What happens when these people refuse to answer questions or allow a search of their home?
IANAL, but I've done quite a bit of reading about this topic. The rule (at least in the US) is very simple: You are not required, nor should you allow any law enforcement officer into your home or business without a search warrant. Needless to say, you should not be talking to them at the front door either. They are not going to bust your door down, and it's likely they will not return.
Keep in mind that you should never talk to a federal agent without your attorney's advice. The reason? It is a federal crime to lie to a federal agent, and there are many cases of people being charged with lying rather than the original crime for which they were being investigated.
Don't take my word for it. Read the words of a former government attorney (scroll down to "The Raid"). There are any number of good articles and videos authored by attorneys. Here's another one that's worth a read.
warrant isn't mentioned in the article either, not for getting the data and not for performing the raid(which they i think claim was "consentual", but what the fuck do you expect people to do if you come up geared for a war and want in..)
Imagine: "Sir, do you consent to a search where we poke and prod around your house and not damage anything, or will you force us to get a warrant and we can completely destroy your house during the 'search'?"
Hint: Courts have ruled that damage done under a search warrant is generally not compensated.
There have been cases where officers "looking for drugs" will damage homes to the point where they are uninhabitable, but the courts rule the individual must pay for the damage. Police performing a "search" can destroy just about any property they want. Smashing vases and poking holes in drywall as part of the "search" are generally considered legal. The police can even burn down your house an not pay you for it (see Patel v US and many other cases).
It has gotten to the point that "inverse condemnation" via police action is now a thing. Police and other government agents so greatly damage the property that it is the equivalent of condemnation.
No, you really don't want them force to get a warrant if they already don't like you.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Or if you use the proper extension.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
A former buddy of mine at 'the fort' (cough) once said information wants to be free.
Having worked not soley at the fort (like my buddy) but at SV companies to launching rockets, I found that his assertion was not true, but that information wants to be exploited. It's already free if you search "the right way" (as mentioned by another buddy at the 'other' agency).
Hence, How'd the government know what they were Googling?"
Easy. Just like every other company that does ads, they buy the info from Google.
Of course, once weak selectors have triggered from the google data, the gov't has other systems (e.g. let's say telco info) to get the location and possibly user of the IP address that google recorded. It's what's been known in all market analysis and the hollywood industry for awhile: federated metadata search. Big Data Analytics is the buzz word for it nowadays. Nothing new here.
Now what do we get out of this? That being anonymous is NOT anonymous anymore. We've hit the Uncertainty Principle in information sharing: if you touch "the system", you're identified. Period. Much like if you measure it, you effect the results. So to the tinfoil hat folks, either stay under your rock or quit complaining and 'work' the system (aka opt in or opt out).
Lastly, the Gov't takes actions that are threatening, where as the credit card companies do the exact same pattern matching, and take similar actions, of course less threatening to you by context. Think about it and you'd be more surprised if the gov't wasn't doing this in the 1st place.
You are employing the modern misuse of the phrase. It does not mean that a question "begs to be asked." Questions cannot beg.
But people can.
"Begging the question" essentially means you are begging the audience to grant you assumptions without requiring you to prove them (generally falsely).
If I were to argue, "To reduce crime we must build more prisons to lock up minorities," that statement begs several questions be answered in a way favorable to my argument, but that I have not proven. Are minorities committing crimes? Will building prisons to lock them up reduce this crime? I haven't proven those things, but I'm just skipping over that messy business and begging the audience to act as if those questions were asked and answered in favor of my argument.
It's basically how politicians speak at all times.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The founding fathers never foresaw global megacorporations with concentrations of wealth and power that exceeds that of some actual countries.
And the obvious counterexample to that claim is the East India Company, which was a global megacorporation of the 18th century. Recall that one of the defining events of the US revolution was the Boston Tea Party which was a protest against a tea tax and trade monopoly which was imposed to assist the East India Company. The tea that they happened to dump was East India tea.
And at the time, the East India Company had power far beyond any modern corporation or crime organization with a valuable opium trade with China (often illegally), a standing army in India, and considerable backing from the English government who saw them as a tool to increase English power in India and elsewhere.
So the founding fathers had a working example of such a global megacorporation in their time and had already crossed paths with it.
Lawyers have repeatedly told me (1) never talk to the cops unless you have a lawyer. (2) Never give them permission to enter your home without a warrant. (3) Never give them permission to search your home without a warrant.
Once they get inside your home, they can look around and possibly find something illegal.
The husband's answer should have been, "Give me your business card and I'll get back to you after I've talked to a lawyer."
Yes, it's tempting to get rid of them by explaining that you're not doing anything wrong.
But a lot of people who didn't think they were doing anything wrong have wound up in jail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_C._Butler
While enshrining the right to vote solely in the hands of wealthy, white land owners
That's a crass, unfounded lie. They were protecting the right to vote for wealthy, white, land-owning males.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
So it looks like this all may be an over-blown non-story.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/
Supposedly, the cops got a tip from their former employer that they'd found these searches and then went to investigate. If that is the case, well then it is pretty much a non-story. Some employers regularly do look at what is done on their computers because they are paranoid employees are wasting time, stealing, whatever.