(h/t The Guardian)
Police in Suffolk County, NY, released the following statement on Thursday evening:
Michele Catalano also made a further statement on her website:
The question is this: Who was monitoring the online Google searches of a Long Island, New York family in order to trigger a visit by six law enforcement officers asking if the family “had any bombs” in their homes?
Michelle Catalano and her family were shaken and made anxious on Wednesday after being visited by “six gentleman in casual clothes”—who turned out to be local police operating under the authority of, or least in connection with, federal agencies—and getting “peppered” with questions resulting from a series of coincidently entered search terms made on their home computer in recent weeks.
Catalano, who writes professionally, explained the whole story in her own words on her blog. In way of background, she explained:
The curious incident, of course, piqued immediate media interest, especially in the aftermath of recent revelations made possible by Edward Snowden about the manner in which the NSA accesses online databases of internet sites, including Google, Facebook, and others.
“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.”
As the police officers casually searched the home–looking on bookshelves, peaking in the kitchen–they asked the husband numerous questions. As Catalano recounts it:
Following up on Catalano’s story, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt talked to a spokesman for the FBI Thursday who said its investigators were not involved directly, but that “she was visited by Nassau County police department … They were working in conjunction with Suffolk County police department.”
Exploring the possible connection between what happened to the Catalanos and recently exposed surveillance programs, The Atlantic’s Philip Bump writes:
Whatever the trail of surveillance and assessment that led law enforcement to the Catalano house, the result is the same and is reflected best by Michelle Catalano herself.
“Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety,” she said of the incident. “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 watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.”
And concluded, “All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.”
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