Is The FBI Monitoring Our Google Searches?

Is The FBI Snooping On Our Google Searches? -- Dan Murphy, Christian Science Monitor

That's the implication of a piece published in an online magazine today.

A potential bombshell has been dropped into the roiling debate about privacy and government snooping that's been unleashed by the leaks of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden: A New York area writer published a piece today saying that her home was visited by members of the "joint terrorism task force" after she and her husband searched for "pressure cookers" and "backpacks" on Google and her son may have searched for links on how to make a bomb.

Michele Catalano's original piece is frustratingly vague, omitting the name of her husband who she said met with the agents, where she lives, and when exactly the visit took place (she writes that it was "weeks ago"). But it is bound to light up the Internet and the national conversation if her central assertion proves true: "It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling."

Read more ....

Update: Google 'Pressure Cookers' and 'Backpacks,' Get a Visit from the Cops -- Atlantic Wire

My Comment: I have been reading in the past few months more and more such stories .... it does make you wonder if the FBI is scanning certain Google keywords and phrases, and acting upon such intel.