One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.
heh, that'd actually be hilarious... scary, but hilarious..
here's the way I see.. There has to be a filter somewhere.. I know just in talking to Chuck he and I have both used every 'buzz' word there is... terrorism-assassination-automatic rifle-sniper-scopes-fannypacks-C4... etc etc etc..we've even joked "Oh, I bet they're listen now".. but nothing, no black helicopters, no 6 black SUV's.. nothing..
I've googled so many things that if a loved one were murdered by an unknown assailant, I'd be 1st on the list of suspect as soon as LEO searched my history.. and still, no SUV running around the area that aren't supposed to be here..
so there has to be a filter.. something that separates me and my phone calls/internet searches from the people, well like in your pressure cooker article..I don't know what that is, but there must be something or I think most of us on this site would have been visited already..
to your greater point... RE gov't invasion of privacy. This coincides with what I was saying about FB,instagram,twitter... when we as a society hand over every last morsel of information about our selves to the internet, do we have any expectation of privacy left?