I hope everybody sees this excellent article, which has many good links:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
Here's the lede:
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 begs the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?
How DID the government know what they were googling?
The Obama Administration disclaimers are obviously false.
I have many law clients from the Middle East. My staff and I spend a lot of time googling things like the Muslim Brotherhood. How many "hops" are we from hundreds of "suspicious" Arabic names?
The administration loyalists often say that if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. That's obviously false. How would you stand up against a hostile interrogation from six armed and self-righteous federal agents?
I'm kind of a hothead, with a strong belief in my rights under the Constitution and the laws of my state. I'm afraid I'd lose my temper big-time.
Here's the ending of that excellent article:
It is also possible that there were other factors that prompted the government's interest in Catalano and her husband. He travels to Asia, she notes in her article. Who knows. Which is largely Catalano's point.
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.
One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.
But the NSA doesn't collect data on Americans, so this certainly won't happen to you.
I'm outraged at what has happened to my native country.
UPDATE: Google Michele Catalano for quite a few other articles about this. She's a well-known writer, so she's getting the story out. Here's another good article:
http://whitenoise.gizmodo.com/...