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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just *who* came to the residence beyond some scary
looking guys in SUVs who said they were FBI.
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.
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.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police...