Subscriber Discussion

Speco Reports Former Employee For Terrorism

CP
Carlton Purvis
Aug 05, 2013

Officials investigated a New York man last week for terrorism after being tipped off that he had been doing online searches for pressure cookers and backpacks. The police came, searched the house, asked some questions, but didn't make any arrests.

Reports identify the man as an ex-employee of surveillance manufacturer Speco. Additionally, the local police say it was his employers who saw the searches on a work computer and called it in.

[UPDATE: Speco told Techcrunch it was not them. No other information was provided.]

Should the company have more to go on before they put this guy in the spotlight? Should they have called him first? Or were they trying to play it safe?

From the Suffolk Police press release:

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.”

JH
John Honovich
Aug 06, 2013
IPVM

Speco is literally the only manufacturer that deters crime. I think they are living up to their marketing.

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Marty Major
Aug 06, 2013
Teledyne FLIR

The 'former employees' LinkedIn profile

p.s. nice hat

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Jon Klieman
Aug 06, 2013
The best part is that the majority of the population has no clue that "Google" is a data mining company. That they are able to monitor the deepest and private thoughts of people based on what they search. Fascinating. Before search engines how did companies, corporations acquire this data? Very expensively through large studies or just didn't get the info. So in the age of security, we must now realise that the search engines are monitored via analytics and voice calls have analytics for key words. Websites also have analytics showing the user traffic of a competitor or individual. Not quite a response warranted for IPVM however if you are google searching on a street corner next to a 30x PTZ then you could be getting watched and data mined all at the same time.
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Luis Carmona
Aug 06, 2013
Geutebruck USA • IPVMU Certified

I seriously hope there's more to this story than this! Do you know how many people searched for "pressure cooker bombs" and "backpacks" when the Boston bombing occured and still are, just for information and curiosity? Can you imagine how easy it is going to be to throw a pall over someone, to possbily make their life and finding employment difficult, by just saying "I think that guy did a search on info for the Taliban", when maybe they did, but for something as innocuous as looking for a cartoon lampooning the Taliban (but of course I leave that part out when I report him).

The media being sensationalist as it is, I really hope they left something out for the purpose of sensationalism, like maybe he's been known to hear animals speaking to him to take up arms against the infidels- anything better than "he did some searches for pressure cooker bombs".

CP
Carlton Purvis
Aug 06, 2013

Luis, I feel like there has to be more to the story. I lean more toward they must not have liked the guy too much. For me, it would take much more than a Google search for me to turn someone in. Maybe the guy was creepy at work too?

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Ethan Ace
Aug 06, 2013

I actually am in the market for a pressure cooker and I have to get some gear for a camping trip...I'll shop for them a few weeks apart, I guess.

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Hal Bennick
Aug 07, 2013
Trafficware, a CUBIC Company

Really? That was all he searched for? Seems like this was probably a piece of a much larger puzzle. If the black helicopters were getting dispatched on google searches alone, I would have to install a landing pad at my house.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Aug 07, 2013

I wonder what would happen if I searched for a month straight for pressure cooker and back pack. Would something really happen?

Like some obsecene amout of searches. Ok, back to security cameras and shootouts...

JH
John Honovich
Aug 07, 2013
IPVM

For someone looking to work at a manufacturer, these claims are pretty frightening. What type of company would turn in their employee? It would be one thing if it turned out the person was indeed a terrorist but I've seen nothing indicating anything close to that.

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Luis Carmona
Aug 07, 2013
Geutebruck USA • IPVMU Certified

That's right; keep in mind his former company turned him in, not a flag at some government agency with access to Google. Not that there isn't access to Google by governement agencies and that they could look there anytime they felt they needed too, like with a tip from someone.

SA
Syd Anthony
Aug 12, 2013

The flag for "pressure cooker bomb" popped up not because he was really looking for a "bomb pressure cooker" ( i.e. the best) but his employer were probably concerned cause he didn't cook!

BTW I got a pressure cooker and it makes a mean beef stew quickly and from poor cuts of meat!

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