Family Visited By Cops For Googling "Pressure Cooker" Was Ratted Out by Ex-Employer

Still creepy, but not a universal concern

A Long Island journalist set the internet aflame today by claiming that Joint Terrorism Task Force agents visited her house to find out why Google searches for "pressure cooker" and "backpack" were run from the family's internet connection. …

But the local police department that actually visited Catalano's husband finally explained themselves, and it turns out the story is more about a dispute with the husband's former employer than rampant secret police surveillance. Here's the statement from the Suffolk County Police Department:

"Suffolk County Criminal Intelligence Detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee. 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.'"