Can you tell me more about the author's credibility?
(She could be the US National Security Advisor and I still would not buy the idea that the FBI is simultaneously (a) dragnetting Google search teams and (b) noisily following up on suspicious ones; if the FBI is watching Google, they sure as fuck don't want you to know that.)
She's a writer who's been published in Forbes and BoingBoing, and has almost a million Twitter followers. So not a random nobody. Doesn't mean she has specialized knowledge in this area, and it _could_ be an experiment to see how fast a story would grow...
I've never heard of her except to remember that she wrote that Boing Boing piece on finding a million followers. And before you say, "Well how the fuck do you know every writer in existence?"...I'd say that I read way more than I should :) But I also do work in media, an industry which obsesses way too much about Twitter.
To make some comparisons...the OP's twitter account has 980,000 followers and rising.
Xeni Jardin, who is as household of a blogger name in the tech circles as one can get, has 77,000 followers
Cory Doctorow has 300,000.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has 1,339,448 followers
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So am not arguing against the OP's credibility, per se, but just pointing out that having 1,000,000 twitter followers and yet not being a well-known name probably means that the followers didn't come because of the writer's credibility and fame. She may be great at Twitter, however.
Oh, so she's a professional attention-seeker, low-effort blogger, and Twitter spammer. That certainly helps me adjust my posterior probability estimate of her legitimacy.
I still would not buy the idea that the FBI is simultaneously (a) dragnetting Google search teams and (b) noisily following up on suspicious ones
The article doesn't really provide evidence for that. The family might have gotten the visit and they might have previously searched for terms the author thinks look suspicious to FBI. This proves nothing - the causal link looks like a typical hindsight mistake.
The visit might as well be a result of some kind of dumb screwup on the part of the forces. It's not like they never kick out the wrong front door or arrest the wrong person. We'll probably never know.
Edit, to clear my point: I have no problem believing the events described in the article but the causal relation is author's speculation and probably wrong.
Comments
I agree that I'd like to see some actual evidence. The author _is_ someone with a degree of credibility, but it is a little hard to believe.
That said, I posted this specifically because I thought the discussion around exactly this would be interesting.
Can you tell me more about the author's credibility?
(She could be the US National Security Advisor and I still would not buy the idea that the FBI is simultaneously (a) dragnetting Google search teams and (b) noisily following up on suspicious ones; if the FBI is watching Google, they sure as fuck don't want you to know that.)
She's a writer who's been published in Forbes and BoingBoing, and has almost a million Twitter followers. So not a random nobody. Doesn't mean she has specialized knowledge in this area, and it _could_ be an experiment to see how fast a story would grow...
However, she is only Twitter famous, due to a self-acknowledged quirk in Twitter's system:
http://boingboing.net/2013/01/18/fickle.html
I've never heard of her except to remember that she wrote that Boing Boing piece on finding a million followers. And before you say, "Well how the fuck do you know every writer in existence?"...I'd say that I read way more than I should :) But I also do work in media, an industry which obsesses way too much about Twitter.
To make some comparisons...the OP's twitter account has 980,000 followers and rising.
Xeni Jardin, who is as household of a blogger name in the tech circles as one can get, has 77,000 followers
Cory Doctorow has 300,000.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has 1,339,448 followers
----
So am not arguing against the OP's credibility, per se, but just pointing out that having 1,000,000 twitter followers and yet not being a well-known name probably means that the followers didn't come because of the writer's credibility and fame. She may be great at Twitter, however.
Ahhh, interesting. Yes, absolutely, it's only a signal, not proof of relevance.
Oh, so she's a professional attention-seeker, low-effort blogger, and Twitter spammer. That certainly helps me adjust my posterior probability estimate of her legitimacy.
The article doesn't really provide evidence for that. The family might have gotten the visit and they might have previously searched for terms the author thinks look suspicious to FBI. This proves nothing - the causal link looks like a typical hindsight mistake.
The visit might as well be a result of some kind of dumb screwup on the part of the forces. It's not like they never kick out the wrong front door or arrest the wrong person. We'll probably never know.
Edit, to clear my point: I have no problem believing the events described in the article but the causal relation is author's speculation and probably wrong.
The apologist begins to sputter.
Why are you so surprised? Mass surveillance isn't happening for no reason.