Same here, but... in light of everything we've learned about govt. surveillance in the past month or two, it seems a lot more plausible than it would have only a few months ago.
OTOH, if this is true, it screams "incompetence" pretty loudly, IMO. Two people googling for "pressure cooker" and "backpack" doesn't add up to squat. I mean, seriously, if I wanted a f'ng pressure cooker to build a bomb with, I'd just go to Wal-mart or Target and pay cash for it. Same for a backpack. You don't need to get on the Internet and do massive amounts of research to buy a pressure cooker and a backpack if you want to be the next Boston bomber. If they're really chasing down this many false positives with no additional evidence to suggest nefarious intent, they're wasting a shit-ton of tax money to do it, and probably overlooking all the real terrorists in the process.
You're right that it seems more plausible, but these surveillance programs have been going supposedly going on for years now. These guys in the story said they do this 100 times+ per week. Where are all the other stories of this happening? I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I am saying it's weird that all of a sudden the FBI would start making house calls after all these still-largely-unverified-by-various-agencies leaks would take place. Anybody hear any other stories like this?
These guys in the story said they do this 100 times+ per week.
That's a good point. If they were doing this even a couple of times a month (or probably per year) you have to expect that it would be getting reported.
And these officers are located where? Are they flying all over the country every day to investigate these 100's of incidents? Or, are they based out of the nearest city and following up on 100's of incidents local to that city's population?
Even if said agent was exaggerating his/her workload, this story sounds fishy.
Weirdly, the part I find hard to believe is that the agents hadn't heard of "quinoa."
Until recently, I hadn't heard of quinoa because I am not hip or a foodie, but then I googled it. All became clear.
I imagine that law enforcement officers aren't idiots, and thus if they ran into some word that could be relevant to the investigation, they'd type it into a search engine.
My token nod of agreement with darien was more or less just a vote to call bullshit on the article. I wasn't trying to be hilariously snarky, or win some kind of prize, or even add to (or perhaps inadvertantly detract from) the grand, and sweeping cultural touchstone that is Hacker News.
Why does my user name match my comment? Why not? It's available. Whether this practice is frowned upon isn't particularly relevant to my goal of participation, in voicing my opinion.
Why did I choose to create a pseudonym for this response? Why wouldn't I? I'm not sock puppeting, or stacking the vote by creating multiple accounts. Whether you can tell or not, I haven't been replying to myself, in an attempt to create a false impression of astro-turfed conversation. I'm not creating this account in an effort to unjustly manipulate the perception of reality that other users have.
I'm not interested in collecting Karma. I'm not here to establish reputation, or take credit for anything. I'm merely participating in the peanut gallery of comments. In this instance, pointing out that I don't believe the assertions of this particular blog entry is relevant, and material to the discussion.
If I create a new user for each topic of discussion, what does it matter to you? Does the fact that I'm creating a new account potentially discredit all other new accounts? Is my behavior somehow toxic and counterproductive to the reflected glory you wish to receive for participating on someone else's website? Am I being inconsiderate when I pollute the namespace of their user IDs? Are you simply worried about ycombinator's servers?
Maybe my respose was simply too short for your tastes. Would you like me to go into detail, regarding why I don't buy the story, which seems like fiction, but is reported as possible fact?
People spend a lot of time not letting HN devolve into what reddit is now. Joke handles are a part of that. Downvoting "jokes" and jokes period is part of that.
Where is the most common place to find a not-insignificant number of novelty accounts on a large-userbase forum? Reddit is the only place that comes to my mind.
