UPDATE: From Chrislove and others in the comments:
An update from Catalano herself:
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.
By now, you've all heard about the woman who blogged that her husband was visited by (some group or other) because they searched backpacks and pressure cookers on Google.
That's not the whole story.
The Suffolk County Police Department has issued this statement (emphasis in bold is mine):
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 1, 2013
As a result of numerous media inquiries, received today by the Suffolk County Police Department regarding an internet blog posting, the following statement has been made available.
Suffolk County Criminal Intelligence Detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee. The former employee’s computer searches took place on this employee’s workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms “pressure cooker bombs” and “backpacks.”
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.
Any further inquiries regarding this matter should be directed to the Suffolk County Police Department
Suffolk County Police Department
Public Information Office
(631) 852-6308
So... one of them was stupid enough to search for "pressure cooker
bombs" and "backpacks" - on a WORK computer? At a COMPUTER COMPANY?? And they didn't clear the cache? Then again, some companies monitor the online time of their employees....
Anyone who knows computers can tell you how easy it is to find a person's search history if they don't clean up behind them.
Upshot is, the government had nothing to do with this. The boss tipped off the police, and the police checked it out. End of story.
I used to come here for news and information. People used to get laughed at if their sources weren't checked and double-checked, or if they were not from valid sources.
What happened to that?
Oops - forgot to give a hat tip to TFinSF, for this comment which gave me the information:
Looks like it was a tip