Google 'Pressure Cookers' and 'Backpacks,' Get a Visit from the Cops

The Atlantic Wire ^ | August 1, 2013 | PHILIP BUMP

[ConservativeInPA]

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 prompts the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?

[The Antiyuppie]

“This article reveals that you should do these searches in other languages to avoid detection. Or through a VPN or remotely controlled computer.”

Arabic would not be my first choice...

[The Antiyuppie]

Of course, everyone who actually loads that page, or for that matter, this one, is ALSO suspect :)

[PhiloBedo]

DHS...good at closing the barn door after the horse is gone.

[coop71]

If you do those searches on a work computer, you might expect to be reported and investigated. Check the latest update from Atlanticwire on this and you’ll see what really happened.

[GeorgeWashingtonsGhost]

Google is a government operation. So is Facebook.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

What is needed here is a spambot army of about 1,000,000 computers to hit Google at random using those terms. That will keep them busy for a while.

Maybe this could be a built-in feature of Linux distributions.

Already exists in Firefox. It is called TrackMeNot. While it does not send out specific requests to a search engine, it sends out random querries at a user set rate. It is available for Windows users as well.