Het profiel van de terrorist

The offices of the Central Social Institution of Prague. April 26, 1937



jur kuipers



Googelen op snelkookpan en rugzak levert bezoek van de Stasi op.

Tja…
Sinds 9/11 schijnt de overheid iedereen te willen bespioneren…
…Want je weet maar nooit…
Achter iedere voordeur een potentiële terrorist.

LOL!


Het oorspronkelijke blog-stuk is door de auteur verwijderd om welke reden ook, blijkt nu, april 2018. Vandaar deze copie, want het verhaal kende een vervolg.


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. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.

Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now. And in these times, when things like the Boston bombing happen, you spend a lot of time on the internet reading about it and, if you are my exceedingly curious news junkie of a twenty-year-old son, you click a lot of links when you read the myriad of stories. You might just read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet and you will in all probability, if you are that kid, click the link provided.

Which might not raise any red flags. Because who wasn’t reading those stories? Who wasn’t clicking those links? But my son’s reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husband’s search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.

That’s how I imagine it played out, anyhow. Lots of bells and whistles and a crowd of task force workers huddled around a computer screen looking at our Google history.

This was weeks ago. I don’t know what took them so long to get here. Maybe they were waiting for some other devious Google search to show up but “what the hell do I do with quinoa” and “Is A-Rod suspended yet” didn’t fit into the equation so they just moved in based on those older searches.

I was at work when it happened. My husband called me as soon as it was over, almost laughing about it but I wasn’t joining in the laughter. His call left me shaken and anxious.

What happened was this: At about 9:00 am, my husband, who happened to be home yesterday, was sitting in the living room with our two dogs when he heard a couple of cars pull up outside. He looked out the window and saw three black SUVs in front of our house; two at the curb in front and one pulled up behind my husband’s Jeep in the driveway, as if to block him from leaving.

Six gentleman in casual clothes emerged from the vehicles and spread out as they walked toward the house, two toward the backyard on one side, two on the other side, two toward the front door.

A million things went through my husband’s head. None of which were right. He walked outside and the men greeted him by flashing badges. He could see they all had guns holstered in their waistbands.

“Are you [name redacted]?” one asked while glancing at a clipboard. He affirmed that was indeed him, and was asked if they could come in. Sure, he said.

They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search. They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.

Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. 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.

They searched the backyard. They walked around the garage, as much as one could walk around a garage strewn with yardworking equipment and various junk. They went back in the house and asked more questions.

Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.

By this point they had realized they were not dealing with terrorists. They asked my husband about his work, his visits to South Korea and China. The tone was conversational.

They never asked to see the computers on which the searches were done. They never opened a drawer or a cabinet. They left two rooms unsearched. I guess we didn’t fit the exact profile they were looking for so they were just going through the motions.

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.

45 minutes later, they shook my husband’s hand and left. That’s when he called me and relayed the story. That’s when I felt a sense of creeping dread take over. What else had I looked up? What kind of searches did I do that alone seemed innocent enough but put together could make someone suspicious? Were they judging me because my house was a mess (Oh my god, the joint terrorism task force was in my house and there were dirty dishes in my sink!). Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety. 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.

All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.

I’m scared. And not of the right things.

CLARIFICATION AND UPDATE

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.
I did not lie or make it up. I wrote the piece with the information that was given. What was withheld from us obviously could not be a part of a story I wrote based on what happened yesterday.

The piece I wrote was the story as we knew it with the information we were told. None of it was fabricated. If you know me, you know I would never do that.

If it was misleading, just know that my intention was the truth. And that was what I knew as the truth until about ten minutes ago. That there were other circumstances involved was something we all were unaware of.

Thank you.

 


Aansluitend verscheen dit stuk in The Atlantic:

UPDATE: NOW WE KNOW WHY GOOGLING ‘PRESSURE COOKERS’ GETS A VISIT FROM COPS


Schermafdruk 2018-04-06 05.43.25

Tip voor Big Brother:
Camera’s op iedere hoek van de straat.
Iedereen een GPS-chip onder de huid en op elk huis een nachtslot, met stil alarm dat koppelt met centrale bewakingsdienst.
– Na 23.00u ’s avonds niemand zonder toestemming meer de deur uit.
Eigenlijk is het al zover… want een Smartphone die vrijwel iedereen op zak heeft is immers een “tracker”…
That’s Not My Phone, It’s My Tracker – NYTimes.com

We moeten er toch alles aan doen zodat terroristische aanslagen worden uitgesloten?!?
Dus waarom niet hè?
Lekker veilig.
Goed voor de nachtrust.

Tja…
Hoe zou de lezer zich voelen als hij/zij merkt dat alle post dat toegezonden wordt wordt opengemaakt en wordt gecontroleerd op inhoud?
Dat willen we niet hè?
Nou!
Dat is dus precies wat er gebeurd met je e-mail, -telefoon -en internetgedrag.
Er wordt over je schouders mee gekeken.

Van “gegevensopslag in de wolk”, wat ons steeds meer wordt opgedrongen, beginnen die geheime diensten helemaal te kwijlen…

Ik vind de redenering “als je niks verdachts doet hoef je je geen zorgen te maken” nergens op slaan.
“Privacy” is dus verleden tijd.
Vadertje staat bepaalt.

Forse stijging internettaps door overheid – nrc.nl

Nederland ‘kampioen’ eigen burgers aftappen
citaat:
Onlangs werd bekend dat in de Verenigde Staten over het heel 2007 2208 taps zijn uitgevoerd.
Dat aantal luisteren de Nederlandse opsporingsdiensten in anderhalve dag af.
De statistische kans dat een Nederlandse burger onder de tap komt is daarmee maar liefst 177 keer groter dan een Amerikaanse burger.
(dit was in 2008, er bestaat het vermoeden dat het de laatste jaren nog een tandje erger is geworden)

NSA überwacht 500 Millionen Verbindungen in Deutschland …

Ach het is maar METADATA
Ja, ja…
Alsof dat niks voorstelt…

Geheime diensten hebben zich sinds 9/11 zoveel macht toegeëigend dat de democratische rechtsstaat in gevaar komt.
Mijn mening.
Amerikaanse geheime diensten, met name de N.S.A., schijnen onbeperkt in Europa hun gang te mogen gaan.
Met toestemming!
De “geschrokken reacties” van regeringsleiders op openbaarmaking van wat stukken (dankzij Edward Snowden) blijken geveinsd,
– dit allemaal om de Doos van Pandora die op een kier stond weer dicht te stampen (presidenten, regeringsleiders; ze staan er allemaal bovenop te springen).
Een hypocriete bende.

German Intelligence Agencies Used NSA Spying Program …

XS4ALL, Column door Willeke Kemkers van de Clinic, rechtswinkel voor juridische vragen over internet:
De ‘slippery slope’ van internetregulering

Het is steeds meer de overheid die bepaalt hoe de burger zich moet gedragen.
Diezelfde burger wordt echter steeds slechter geïnformeerd over hoe de overheid zich gedraagt.
De overheid maakt misbruik van de situatie met de bedoeling de vrijheid van de burger steeds meer in te perken
Wat stelt democratie zo nog voor?
Hoe moet ik stemmen als ik me niet meer weloverwogen kan informeren?
Ik maar vertrouwen moet hebben in overheidsdiensten die zaken uitspoken waar ik niks van af mag weten?
De Tweede Kamer geen controlerende taak meer heeft?

Natuurlijk…
Hier is het altijd al een “schijndemocratie” geweest.
De werkelijke macht is in handen van onzichtbare figuren die achter de schermen opereren.
Die hebben de touwtjes in handen.
Zolang je je maar aan de regeltjes houdt…
Til vooral niet het tipje van de inktzwarte sluier op…
Als je het aan de grote klok hangt ben je de klos…
Heb je geen leven meer.

Wees vooral niet te nieuwsgierig en laat Google links (rechts?) liggen.

Voor het geval “Big Brother” dit leest…

Had ook gezocht op snelkookpan…
Ben ik blij dat ik niet opgezocht heb hoe je er een bom van kunt maken…
Oeps!
Nu heb ik het toch gezegd…
Nu ik dit rondmail zijn anderen dankzij mij ook verdacht…

Big Brother is watching you!

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I don’t want to live in a society …

Een standbeeld voor Edward Snowden.

Nog een prettige dag.


ps:
Heeft u deze speelfilm van Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck (wat een naam zeg…) al gezien?

Das Leben der Anderen
Over de paranoïde samenleving in voormalig Oost Duitsland.
Da’s alweer lang geleden…
Of is die speelfilm een toekomstvisie?



Uitgelichte foto: Praag, 1937 – bron

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