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Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: tbart on August 02, 2013, 12:05 am

Title: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: tbart on August 02, 2013, 12:05 am
just caught this

don't really know if this was NSA w/Prism or the FBI has their own network "nets" , ala Carnivore

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/01/writer-claims-online-searches-for-pressure-cookers-and-backpacks-earned-her-a-visit-from-the-feds-and-thats-not-even-the-scariest-part-of-the-story/

Writer Claims Online Searches for Pressure Cookers and Backpacks Earned Her a Visit From the Feds – And That’s Not Even the Scariest Part of the Story
Aug. 1, 2013 12:28pm Becket Adams

Professional writer Michele Catalano searched online Tuesday for information on pressure cookers while (at around the same time) her husband was Googling backpacks.

The next morning, she claims they got a visit from a joint terrorism task force.

“The composition of such task forces depend on the region of the country,” Philip Bump writes in The Atlantic, “but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, include a variety of federal agencies. Among them: the FBI and Homeland Security.”

Catalano describes the scene:

    [T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked. …

    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.

Obviously, this raises a serious question: how did the feds know what Catalano and her husband were looking for online?

Remember, since the beginning of the NSA scandal, the U.S. government has fiercely denied claims that they collect data on American citizens.

The U.S. government is not “allowed to spy on Americans – although there are exceptions of which it takes advantage,” the Atlantic notes. “Its PRISM program, under which it collects internet content, does not include information from Americans unless those Americans are connected to terror suspects by no more than two other people.”

So how did the so-called joint terrorism task force know about Catalano?

“It’s possible that one of the two of them is tangentially linked to a foreign terror suspect, allowing the government to review their internet activity,” the report continues.

“After all, that ‘no more than two other people’ ends up covering millions of people. Or perhaps the NSA, as part of its routine collection of as much internet traffic as it can, automatically flags things like Google searches for ‘pressure cooker’ and ‘backpack’ and passes on anything it finds to the FBI,” it adds.

Of course, any number of possible factors could have triggered the fed’s interest in the Catalano’s – and that’s the scariest part of her account:

    They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.

If these reports are accurate, it means that roughly 100 times per-week a group of armed men visit U.S. citizens at their homes to search their property for reasons that may include their online searches.

That’s a little unnerving.
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: MeowFlakes on August 02, 2013, 02:34 am
spooky. had me rolling at them asking if they can make a bomb out of a rice cooker
USA Land of the free  ;)
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: mcguire39 on August 02, 2013, 02:58 am
Son of a bitch, Huxley was right.
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: stenr on August 02, 2013, 02:58 am
Stuff like this makes me glad I'm not american  :-\
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: goblin on August 02, 2013, 03:00 am
This is simply a great illustration of the complete abandonment of a commodity that used to exist in abundance here. It's called common sense. It's been replaced by, well... anything that comes easy and doesn't involve critical thinking, like automatization of actions and making decisions that are based on nothing more than pre-written protocols.

Witness for example things like zero-tolerance guidelines at schools, and how they're doing ridiculous things like patting down five year olds, and handcuffing little boys who make a gun symbol with their hands and pointing it at somebody. Pure idiocy.

goblin
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: Rastaman Vibration on August 02, 2013, 07:30 am
Wow, 4th Amendment rights , my ass!

Thanks for posting tbart
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: valakki on August 02, 2013, 03:54 pm
Son of a bitch, Huxley was right.

of course he was right. he was right about everything.
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: tbart on August 03, 2013, 05:38 pm
looks like the reporter has revised her story - apparently, her husband's former employer discovered, after he'd been terminated, that he had been researching "pressure cooker bombs" or something similiar, and reported him - which leads me to wonder about the reporter indicating the FBI stating they go out on interviews like this 100 times a month....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383958/Pressure-cooker-raid-Long-Island-work-snooping-employers-NSA-surveillance.html

Revealed: Pressure cooker raid in Long Island was the work of snooping employers, not NSA surveillance

    Michele Catalano, a former writer for Forbes, published an account of the raid today
    She believes it was her family's recent Google searches that prompted the visit
    The FBI, Nassau and Suffolk County Police Department have denied responsibility in the search

By Ashley Collman and Daily Mail Reporter

A journalist living in Long Island was greatly mistaken when she published a blog post claiming that Google searches for ‘pressure cooker bombs’ and ’backpack’ had led police to her doorstep.
As it turns out, the police tip-off came from the former employers of Michele Catalano’s husband Todd Pinnell.
Suffolk County police explained Friday that ‘detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore-based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee.’

Pinnell, who worked as a product manager at New York-based Speco Technologies, apparently had been searching for the terms ‘pressure cooker bombs’ and ‘backpacks’ on his work computer when his former employers began to fear that they may have a terrorist in their midst.

That recent revelation followed a major uproar among Internet users on Thursday after Catalano, a former contributor to Forbes, published her piece, which prompted many to quickly blame the NSA.

Catalano published her account of what happened on the site Medium on Thursday, saying six plain-clothes cops showed up at her home, and proceeded to interview her husband about pressure cookers and search her house.

She said she believes her 'news junkie' son reading articles on the Boston Bombings, coupled with her hunt for a pressure cooker and her husband's online shopping for a backpack created the 'perfect storm of terrorism profiling.'

The FBI, Nassau County and Suffolk County Police Departments maintained that they had no invo9levement in the call.

Though Catalano wasn't at home at the time, her husband Pinell was when three black SUVs drove up to their house and the cops exited and started to approach their property, flashing badges with handguns in their holsters.

Pinell went outside to meet the men and complied with their request to look around the house and backyard.

They walked around the living room, looked at books and pictures, and petted their dogs.

When they asked to go into the son's room, her husband said he was sleeping and they left him alone.

They also interviewed him, asking about where he was from, where his wife was, and if they had any bombs. They also asked about whether they owned a pressure cooker.

Her husband said no, but that they had a rice cooker.

'Can you make a bomb with that?' they asked.

He told them his wife used it to make quinoa.

'What the hell is quinoa?' they asked.

Catalano said that 'by this point they realized they were not dealing with terrorists and the men wrapped their search up.

Pinell called her immediately after, laughing about the incident, but Catalano didn't see the humor.

She said she felt a 'great sense of anxiety' when she realized that 'this is where we are at.'

'Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a terrorism watch list,' she wrote.

The FBI confirmed the visit to The Guardian, but said their officers weren't involved.

A spokesman said it was Nassau County Police officers working in conjunction with the Suffolk County Police Department.

But a Nassau County police spokesman told MailOnline they weren't involved.

'We did not, did not, go out to this woman's home,' police spokesman James Imperiale said. 'What agency went I couldn't tell you. I don't know.'

A Suffolk County Police spokesman referred media back to the FBI.

If the search were truly carried out due to suspicious Google searches, it would have required a warrant.

In a company report on transparency, Google detailed how they deal with law enforcement officials looking for evidence online.

'The government needs legal process—such as a subpoena, court order or search warrant—to force Google to disclose user information. Exceptions can be made in certain emergency cases, though even then the government can’t force Google to disclose.'

Which has led some to question the validity of Ms Catalano's story.

Today, she took to Twitter, writing that she wasn't giving interviews to the media.

'I'll say it once: I didn't make it up,' she wrote. 'Thanks to those defending my integrity.'

On Friday, Catalano sang a different tune.

Her story update on Medium read:

'We found out through the Suffolk Police Department that the searches involved also things my husband looked up at his old job. We were not made aware of this at the time of questioning and were led to believe it was solely from searches from within our house.

'I did not lie or make it up. I wrote the piece with the information that was given. What was withheld from us obviously could not be a part of a story I wrote based on what happened yesterday.

'The piece I wrote was the story as we knew it with the information we were told. None of it was fabricated. If you know me, you know I would never do that.

'If it was misleading, just know that my intention was the truth. And that was what I knew as the truth until about ten minutes ago. That there were other circumstances involved was something we all were unaware of.'





Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: brodie on August 03, 2013, 11:42 pm
100 times a month? Doubt it.

There is clearly something we don't know (that the govt does) about this married couple.
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: TheYowie on August 04, 2013, 01:36 am
I once looked up how to make a Haggis.

Expecting a knock on the door any second now.
Title: Re: real life example of why to use TOR
Post by: Praetorian on August 04, 2013, 03:41 am
Someone search "Best methods for secretly assassinating your country's leader" via Google on the clearnet and hit your stopwatch.  There's got to be a science to this.