Did you read the Guardian report?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police...

  Members of what she described as a "joint terrorism task
  force" descended on Catalano's home on Wednesday. A spokesman
  for the FBI told to the Guardian on Thursday that its
  investigators were not involved in the visit, but that "she
  was visited by Nassau County police department … They were
  working in conjunction with Suffolk County police 
  department."

That wasn't the linked story on this thread, but I found this bit interesting :

  A spokesman for the FBI told to the Guardian on 
  Thursday that its investigators were not involved 
  in the visit, but that "she was visited by Nassau 
  County police department … They were working in
  conjunction with Suffolk County police department.

But it was only after the story ran that she Tweeted this : https://twitter.com/inthefade/status/362707932586053633

So FBI became JTTF, which in turn became Nassau cops?

This is why we should all stop listening to the 24 hour news machine and wait a while before everything is cleared up and fully presented. This is a developing story and clinging to one or two tidbits finagled from the authorities here and there aren't going to cut it.

From FBI's website: "The New York Joint Terrorism Task Force brings together representatives of 49 local, state, and federal agencies to run down any and all terrorism leads, develop and investigate cases, provide support for special events, and proactively identify threats that may impact the area and the nation. We also have satellite Joint Terrorism Task Forces working out of Long Island, Westchester County, and Orange County." Source: http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/about-us/our-partnerships/partner...

It makes full sense that the FBI would get a report and share with local law enforcement (members of JTTF) to follow up. I'm still very skeptical that this all originated with google searches, but the story of "JTTF agents" checks out.

What do you think "Joint" in "Joint Terrorism Task Force" stands for? It's FBI working with local Police Departments, which in this case sounds like tipping off the PD to go check her out.

Again, according to a retired FBI exec with experience in terrorism work at FBI, the term "JTTF" might mean almost nothing at all.

Who would the JTTF be made up of?

While I see where you're going with this, let's take a moment to remember that the Joint Terrorism Task Force is made up of individual law enforcement officers, not agencies. That is to say that not all members of the Whatever County Sheriff's Department are inherently part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

So it's certainly possible that three black SUVs worth of the local sheriff's deputies, all of whom were members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, showed up to question her about her internet searching.

Or this fiction writer is not portraying an accurate version of the events.

Basically, it's a modern day "posse" made up of individuals from Federal law enforcement (FBI, Secret Service, ICE, Border Patrol, etc) and from local or specialized law enforcement (railroad police, etc).

The officers are basically deputized as JTTF members. It's a common model that's been around for a long time. For example, the US Marshalls have a fugitive task force for picking up suspects with arrest warrants and the DEA has something similar for drug raids.

According to David Gomez, a former FBI exec who worked in domestic terrorism, "JTTF" is a catchall term used by many (perhaps all) LEOs working on terrorism in any capacity. The term apparently has no technical meaning.

ok so when can i think/share thoughts with other thinkers? is there a specific authority you are waiting for?

So apparently local police forces have access to the kind of data required to learn what people are searching for.

I read the report, it's still a single-source story from the person involved and their interpretation of what happened.

The comment I replied to said this:

  Just *who* came to the residence beyond some scary 
  looking guys in SUVs who said they were FBI.

The Guardian report, which was referred to in the comment I replied to, answered that question with quite a bit of specificity.

That comment also had the complaint about downvotes for asking for evidence before I replied.

I agree that there is no concrete evidence that the police showed up as a direct result of them searching for specific keywords. There probably never will be. But how would she prove it? Could anyone prove it in public? Would any investigation that looked into the matter ever be declassified? Could Congress hold a hearing in open session and get answers about the incident?

Unless her husband had a recording of the conversation she claims happened here:

  "Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker 
  bomb?" My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them 
  if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure 
  cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them 
  admitted they did.

https://medium.com/something-like-falling/2e7d13e54724

Or unless one of the officers involved in that conversation confirms the conversation happened as she reported, we'll never know.

It is completely reasonable to be skeptical of her interpretation of the event. But it is also reasonable to wonder about the consequences of living in a society where her interpretation is a reasonable one, even if it is unlikely. Before Snowden's leaks many people would declare her a nut for even thinking her searches could be related to the investigation. Now we have evidence that the story could happen as she presented it, even if it didn't in this case.

You're correct about that.

The original commenter wrote: "Our government is sending gangs of armed men to perfectly innocent citizens"

Local governments are governments too. Just because the Feds didn't show up doesn't mean this isn't highly problematic behavior. The fact remains that harmless private communication was used as an excuse to interfere in the lives of ordinary citizens. This is what is so problematic about it.

EDIT: After reading some more critical comments, I should state that I am ASSUMING what she said is true - that the agents actually asked her about Internet searches. I have to admit that she could just be making that part up.

See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police...

The Guardian says they confirmed that there was a visit, and were told that it was a local police force.

The Atlantic's headline was updated to reflect that.

You possibly got downvoted because people assumed that the scary photograph at the top of the article was taken during this incident and not during the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings, and that it is therefore a piece of evidence. I thought the same thing at first.

That's just an indication of how much TAW is milking this story for all of its shock effect before the facts are fully established.

Besides, in the original article, she said the guns were holstered when they were talking to her husband and from the tone, they were cordial and shook his hand before they left. Hardly a "raid".

Six strangers with guns coming to your home and demanding to conduct a search is hardly a friendly visit. And however cordial they are, they have the right to use any violence against you - including lethal - at any moment they decide there's anything suspicious, and the experience suggests even if they are completely wrong worst thing that would happen to them is suspension with pay. As for you, anything you say to them can and will be used against you, and any factually incorrect statements, however trivial and minute the incorrect part is, that you make to them can be grounds to a felony prosecution if they so desire.

So I don't think it can be dismissed as a friendly encounter. I would certainly feel extremely discomforted by such a visit.

The police were polite... so it's not a raid? What if he denied a voluntary search of the house? Would they politely stop investigating them as terrorists and monitoring their internet activity?

Exactly. How it is labeled isn't the important bit here. The fact that they showed up AT ALL based on what appears to be a confluence of Internet searches is what is concerning.

Between assisting the greater good and looking out for number one, they didn't seem to do enough of the later.

IANAL: They took a gamble by letting them in the door without a warrant. That opened themselves up to legal liability, regardless of "nothing to hide" innocence.

If they had found anything that looked suspicious, it would be a different story. They lucked out, this time.

A law school professor and a police investigator teach a class of law students why you can gain nothing by talking to the police: https://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc

>Just who came to the residence beyond some scary looking guys in SUVs who said they were FBI.

From the article, "the Suffolk and Nassau police, which The Guardian reported were the authorities that effected the raid".

As to the downvotes: you could have pointed out the discrepancy between "Feds" and "cops" (the article's title was changed to reflect that) without turns of phrase such as "we have only her word", "hearsay", "I'm not calling her a liar".

There is another huge step missing here - proof of causation. How do they know it was their web searches that caused the visit?

They don't. See: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/FWAVRVaN...

So you're saying that a woman posted photos of firecrackers on Facebook on July 4th, and this may have contributed to a visit by the police? And this is supposed to be BETTER?

I agree that we need more information before jumping to conclusions, but the additional context you're providing doesn't give me much comfort.

I'm not trying to comfort you or defend the local cops who showed up. Arguably showing up over a FB post is even dumber than if they actually had snarfed Internet searches.

But local cops acting dumb is a different story entirely than LOCAL COPS WATCHING OUR GOOGLE SEARCHES.

Alright, that's a fair point. I still think it's a bit scary/sad that we need to worry about our public Facebook posts being potentially misconstrued by local police as grounds for a visit.

Far better in my book. It means what likely happened is any one of her FB friends, or since the firecrackers were public, anyone else saw the image of fireworks and possibly other comments, became concerned, and reported it to law enforcement. Even if this was found via some source of open source intelligence gathering operation that ended up in a visit, that is leagues away from private google searches leading to a visit.

> So you're saying that a woman posted photos of firecrackers

M-66 explosives that look like firecrackers.

I'm glad you found this.

I don't doubt that some law enforcement officers from some agency showed up at her doorstep for some reason. And I can accept that there were - at some point - questions about bombs for some reason or another.

But I suspect that her internet searches contributed to this appearance is (at best) hysteria or (at worst) convenient mistruths.

Assuming that the visit is actually related to Internet monitoring, then the monitoring algorithm is certainly not 'everybody who searches X AND Y AND NOT Z,' but rather some calculated terrorism score. Actually I think it is entirely possible, that whoever does this has no actual idea how the score is calculated and the machine learning algorithm did just pick them because of a random similarity to the search profile.

Ignoring your shameless self promotion, how do you know that the post you reference wasn't "reasonable suspicion" for law enforcement to gain access to the internet searches? Your assumption does not discount or disprove the assumption in the story. How is your conjecture any more accurate? Why not as a reporter for a news outlet, follow up instead of adding to the disinformation?

The article was updated.

"The Suffolk County Police Department released a statement this evening that answers the great mystery of the day.

After interviewing the company representatives, Suffolk County Police Detectives visited the subject’s home to ask about the suspicious internet searches. The incident was investigated by Suffolk County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Detectives and was determined to be non-criminal in nature."