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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?"
You really need to ask this question? Or you just playing stewpit?
I'm just glad the phrase "begs the question" wasn't used in this regard.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
If only we could get this Bush guy out of office this stuff wouldn't happen.
This raises another question. What happens when these people refuse to answer questions or allow a search of their home?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
We should all Google 'pressure cooker' and 'backpacks'. Let's send them for a spin.
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.
Test your net with Netalyzr
The title has changed to "get a visit from the cops" since it was confirmed that it was the Long Island Task Force. However, the FBI was "aware of the operation".
I am sure they are aware, of a a lot more things. Damn pressure cooker backpacks...
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Maybe overload is the only way to combat this sort of thing. Encourage all of your friends to search for pressure cookers and backpacks today.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Because they are not just looking at the metadata of what you search on the internet, they are looking at the content of those searches.
Except that google.com defaults to https. So whoever was wiresharking had Google's SSL key or some other kind of inside access.
Oh well just the local police, that's fine then.
[/sarcasm]
$i = 0
while $i = 0
wget ”http://www.google.com/search?q=Pressure+Cooker"
wget ”http://www.google.com/search?q=backpack"
'Nuff Said
sudo make me a sandwich
A coworker of mine is from Pakistan. His son ordered a detailed book on the engineering of the Boeing 777 airliner. Shortly thereafter two FBI agents came to his house to investigate. My coworker called his son down to meet them. When the agents found out he was 11 years old, they laughed, apologized and left.
This happened about three years ago.
Which raises the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?"
I, uh, don't really think we have all that much doubt about that one anymore.
As the better question - Do the wardens of our panopticon really consider the terrorists that stupid, that they would A) try the same attack again, and B) really need to Google the concept of a backpack?
Oh, god. Now I really want to Google 'stewpit', but I'm worried it's some keyword for a terrorist cannibal org.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Uhhh...I thought it was common knowledge that the search engines and the feds are all buddy buddy? Not that it would have really mattered since we now know about the wiretap they have on the AT&T trunks which everything goes through at one time or another.
What I find ironic about all this is if they EVER catch a single terrorist thanks to all this big brother crap? It'll be the kind too fucking dumb to have been any good at being a terrorist, your Richard Reid "useful idiot" kind of Muslim extremist. Any terrorist that could actually do any damage, your Abu Nidal mean motorscooter types aren't gonna be so damned retarded as to Google for instructions with zero obfuscation, not when you have multiple free anonymizing services and search engines that don't log like DuckDuckGo and Scroogle.
So once again we have the government wasting huge piles of money and infringing the rights and privacy of everyone for a program that won't work...must be Thursday.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
One of the big problems the EFF has had suing the NSA is that of "standing" - they have a hard time showing actual harm. This guy has standing to sue. He can show actual harm from unauthorized surveillance.
This is proof we're still living in a free country! They didn't die in a hail of military-grade automatic weapons fire.
When will Americans get their heads out of their ass and accept that this is not about any single president? This is bigger than the President. It's bigger than either party. And it's not good for Americans regardless of their party, their gender, their age, their color...
When we use childish reasoning it allows the abuse to continue.
Have you guys not been following US news for the last two months?
This is another reason why I hate the, "if you've nothing to hide" nonsense. In the past year, I've bought a pressure cooker, large capacity backpacks, fairly sizable quantities of pure sodium hydroxide (more, anyway, than one needs to unclog the drain), soldering irons and other equipment to work on electronics, numerous tanks of propane, gun powder, and we go to shops and run in social circles frequented by Arabic speakers. Why? Because, respectively, we (my wife and I) have a garden and can vegetables, we like to go hiking, we make our own soap and detergent, I like to fool around with electronics for fun, we use propane to heat our kettles while brewing beer, I hunt with a muzzle-loader, and as Orthodox Christians a great many of our coreligionists are Palestinian or Lebanese.
Of course the protectionist or supporter of the national security state will say, "See, you had nothing to hide. No big deal." But that's just the point. With enough information on people's activities, even the innocent ones can be construed as potentially dangerous. With enough information, anyone and everyone becomes a suspect. To say nothing of the fact that this subjects people to unreasonable searches, it lessens the chances of actually finding a legitimate focus for suspicion.
.I thought it was common knowledge that the search engines and the feds are all buddy buddy?
But, but...the NSA head and several Congressmen have assured us that they aren't blanket monitoring everyone. And surely they wouldn't lie!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
We may know that the government was doing.
But the government has still never answered that question.
And therein lies the problem, in our Republic, there is an expectation that we the people know how our government operates. We aren't necessarily entitled to all the governments information, but full and complete information oh how our government runs is something a "free" country would be expected to know in detail.
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.
Now we have had various ample proof that parts of the government are exceeding their power, that they are literally breaking laws, and even the checks and balances of our system do nothing to detect and correct, often times due to collusion or tacit approval . We have whistleblowers pointing out these abuses, and they're to be prosecuted, and while people may cheer for them and call them heroes, little else seems to be happening. There are more protests and support rallies for these folks in foreign lands than here in the US.
It's not even complex: Parts of the government have been knowingly breaking the laws that they themselves were supposed to protect and enforce, yet they have not been put in jail, or even brought to trial. Nothing appears like it will change.
I hate to sound all tin-foil-hat-infowars-crazy, but at the point where the government decides it doesn't have to follow the law, and can do anything it wants - without even a hand-waving distraction, it's not a democracy or republic - it's authoritarian leaning towards totalitarianism. Laws were broken. Someone, perhaps whole groups of someone, need to go to jail. Claiming that it's okay because a law is open to interpretation, without question, by a government body not privileged with the power of interpreting law, and then further masking it with secrecy in part to hide the legality is right out! That's not a senate committee issue. It's black and white - trial time. If the president says he knew and explicitly approved, it's also impeachment time, followed by jail time. This isn't getting a hummer in the oval office level stuff, this is beyond Nixon-level stuff.
People turned out in the thousands for the OWS, and they didn't even have a good argument, much less any sort of attempt at a solution. Where are the thousands for this?
1. The check is in the mail.
2. Trust me, I'm a Lawyer.
3. You won't get pregnant, really.
4. The NSA is not blanket monitoring everyone.
These 4 statements have something in common. We leave determining what that is, as an exercise for the alert mind. . .
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.
You people really have too much time on your hands.
They're ALL Assclowns. And once they get inside the Beltway, the notional difference between Brand D and Brand R tends to fuzz out.
I like my plan, better: All Elected Officials serve two terms: the first in office, and the second in jail, based on what they did during the first. And no "country club prisons. . . "
Yes. With ease. I'm assuming that their local ISP will gladly hand over information. We have seen in the past how willing ISPs are to work with the RIAA/MPAA, so why wouldn't they work with law enforcement or the FBI?
But in this case, they couldn't get a (regular) warrant. There is no probable cause. The only power they have is the threat of a warrant. Unless secret warrants are easier to get.
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.
A) (The number of pressure cooker bombs made) / (the number of pressure cookers sold) is virtually 0.
B) (The number of backpacks used to bomb something) / (the number of backpacks sold) is virtually 0.
Even taking A and B together, (the number of pressure cooker bombs transported in backpacks) / (the number of people who own both pressure cookers and backpacks) is virtually 0.
A and B are meaningless. Worse than meaningless, they waste resources that could be put toward investigating real threats.
C) With all the news about pressure cooker bombs, there are lots of people, in the 10s of millions, who have searched for what a pressure cooker bomb is, myself included.
D) Lots of people travel. Neither China nor S. Korea are hotbeds of terrorist activity. N. Korea is all but impossible to enter from either of those countries.
And for gods sake, most importantly, absolutely none of this should have been known by any law enforcement agency because they had no probable cause to start an investigation in the first place. There is a serious problem when everyone American citizen's internet activity and travel history are being constantly monitored.
Do the wardens of our panopticon really consider the terrorists that stupid, that they would A) try the same attack again, and B) really need to Google the concept of a backpack?
That's the problem. One of the truisms in the armed forces is that the generals are always fighting the last war. Similarly, our anti-terrorism forces are always trying to prevent the last attack. Thanks to the Unabomber, we still can't mail packages bigger than 16 ounces unless we do it in person. Thanks to the shoe-bomber, we have to take off our shoes when we go through the metal detector at the airport. Now we can't Google for pressure cookers and backpacks. Fer Crissakes.
God forbid that some clever terrorists decide to Google for suspicious terms, with the intent of luring anti-terrorism forces into an ambush. I wonder how our somewhat dim and reactionary anti-terrorism forces would deal with that. Good thing that the average jihadist is too stupid to play that type of chess.
And to think I was turned down for an Army info-sec position...I have exactly the sort of devious mind it takes to stay several steps ahead of the bad guys. Sadly, they prefer people with "N years of experience in this field, N years of experience in that field"...sigh.
And the worst thing about this...it means that the terrorists have won. They never claimed to be able to destroy our country, or overwhelm us in a military sense...they said they wanted to destroy our way of life. Well, our freedom has been replaced with a paranoid, reactionary, technologically-supercharged fascist surveillance state. The terrorists didn't even have to impose it; the western world imposed it on themselves. Somewhere, two guys with a lot of Mohammeds in their name are toasting the defeat of their enemy.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Which is what I don't understand. Why is that necessary? Is the existence of blatantly unconstitutional practices not harm enough for them, or do they like giving the government yet another reason to keep everything secret?
Unfortunately, our system isn't based on common sense, or even passing the giggle test. All our system offers is the chance to take them to court. And our courts aren't impartial arbiters of facts; a trial is more like a poorly-produced stage play.
But this is supposed to be better than the alternative.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
...FOILED by PRISM. Nice work boys.
When will Americans get their heads out of their ass and accept that this is not about any single president? This is bigger than the President. It's bigger than either party. And it's not good for Americans regardless of their party, their gender, their age, their color...
What you have to be asking, is how do these spy agencies get a guy like Obama, who painted himself as the grand reformer, the president for the people, to jump in bed with them and defend them to the hilt?
Did they tell him: "We know what you did in Russia, Barry!"? Or did the intelligence community as a whole run this guy for president (twice) and make sure he won? How many ballot boxes did they stuff? How many electronic voting machines did they compromise?
And in light of their capabilities, how can we ever contemplate electronic voting in this country?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I can't believe that nobody has linked this yet:
What's the worst thing that can happen if you misuse a pressure cooker in an ordinary kitchen?
but full and complete information oh how our government runs is something a "free" country would be expected to know in detail.
Didn't you get the memo? On Sept 11th 2001 the US stopped being a "free" country and is now a "safe" country.
So shut up about your worthless "freedom" and "constitution" and "rights" you terrorist defending traitor!
I know you meant this as a joke, but the underlying punchline isn't funny.
It wasn't particularly funny 40 years ago either, but that didn't keep it from being a fairly common joke:
I think the major change is that we communicate in more ways than just the telephone nowadays, and the technical means to monitor those communications has gotten more pervasive and sophisticated... so more of our privacy is exposed.
Yeah. I'm not laughing either.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Yeah, I got the memo, but too much of it was redacted to know what it said.... ;-)
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.