14 DAY TRIAL // The story of the pressure cooker, the backpack, and the Boston bombings has taken a turn. Given the media attention received by the case, the police released a statement saying that the information didn’t come from Google, but from a former employer.
“The former employee’s computer searches took place on this employee’s workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms ‘pressure cooker bombs’ and ‘backpacks’,” the press release states.
The company in question had employed Michele Catalano’s husband until recently, who has apparently conducted some searches on his work computer.
Michele Catalano took to her blog to point out that her previous statements, namely that the police came and visited them for searches coming from the house was based on what she knew at the time, since the officers that inspected their house did not state where their information was coming from.
“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,” Catalano wrote.
That being said, at least Google is in the clear on this issue since they were not the ones to provide the information to the police. PRISM has also not played a role in the issue, just a snoopy employer who tracks the online activity movements of its staff.
This means that Google isn’t flagging the searches for these terms, so it could potentially be ok to enter such queries.
To be on the safe side, you should probably avoid it though, unless you want to get raided by the police or added to an NSA tracking list, which means you can officially say good-bye to your online privacy. Not that you’d actually know it.