10 ms·

Some FBI agents came to my house once and told me that my home Internet had been used to visit Islamic Extremist websites. They brought a local police office wi

Some FBI agents came to my house once and told me that my home Internet had been used to visit Islamic Extremist websites. They brought a local police office with them and a 'threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace. They asked me if my family was Muslim and wanted to know if we had been radicalized. We are not religious (at all). We do not attend church, synagogue or mosque. We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. I have no idea why they thought this about us. Maybe it was an IP mix-up, but it was very disturbing. I feared that I may lose my job. I became very afraid of the FBI that day. I think this could happen to anyone at anytime.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
That's extremely disturbing. Accessing some random website should never cause police to show up. They should never even know what you did. That's like keeping tabs on what books people read and raiding somebody's house because they looked up how bombs are made.
wbl 5y ago
The only words you should ever say to the FBI "on advice of counsel I am taking the fifth".
- ChrisKnott 5y ago
  This is awful advice for this specific situation. OP apparently managed to clear up the mistake without much bother by speaking to them (although they were understandably shaken up by the experience). This presumably wouldn't have happened if they'd done what you suggest.
  - P_I_Staker 5y ago
    On the other hand, they could accuse OP of lying (something that's highly subjective), which is a serious federal crime.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Not speaking to law enforcement outside the presence of your attorney is excellent advice. There's no downside to having the attorney there, and potentially life shattering downsides to attempt otherwise.
giantg2 5y ago
It absolutely can.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace" "I feared that I may lose my job." I understand that police/FBI have to conduct investigation. What dont understand is involvement of the employer , it's extremely disturbing - you have not been convincted, you have not been charged, you are not even a suspect or accused of anything at this point - how is your private life the business of your employer? Why is your privacy being breached and livehood being placed at risk? Surely the FBI is not allowed to publicise random dirt they find on innocent people?
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  The FBI still has buildings named after J Edgar Hoover. That should tell you everything you need to know about their institutional respect for justice and due process.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruez 5y ago
    For non-americans, what was J Edgar Hoover known for?
    - black6 5y ago
      Turning the FBI into a blackmail operation.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Investigation_of_subversion_and_radicals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Investigation_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Reaction_to_civil_rights_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Reaction_to_ci...
    - stephen_g 5y ago
      I'm also not an American - but as far as I've read - massive abuse of power in using the FBI to spy on political rivals, illegal wiretapping, illegal surveillance of US congressmen and even presidents, running the FBI while they were doing extremely controversial programs like COINTELPRO and programs and investigations that tried to hinder the civil rights movement, etc.
sjs382 5y ago
> and a 'threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace. What was the reason for this? What type of workplace?
- akira2501 5y ago
  I'm assuming any workplace which requires a government security clearance to enter and work in.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
It's (scarily) interesting that they react with actual personal attendance based purely on a very limited set of electronic information. From your further description: > We are not religious (at all). We do not attend church, synagogue or mosque. We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. Would not the FBI have been able to any amount of background searching (read: further electronic information gathering), that would be less effort-intensive than getting arranging a 'threat assessment' coordinator from throw_away_dgs' actual workplace and a local police officer for an in-person door-knock. If such background checks were performed, then they either don't have much data or their threat weightings are set to red-scare levels of paranoia. Either way, it's scary. Unless there's more to the story.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  > It's (scarily) interesting that they react with actual personal attendance based purely on a very limited set of electronic information. Either their intel is better than they let on and didnt think they would be walking into an ambush or they are more stupid than we think.
  - CrazyCatDog 5y ago
    Actually, I think they had no intel. You NEED intel for a judge to order a subpoena—and if a subpoena was issued, the ISP would open their firehose, and overwhelm the FBI with evidence suggesting that there’s nothing to investigate. And having visited extremist sites a handful of times—even if advertantly—is probably not going to meet the threshold for a subpoena. If the FBI visited me and casually asked about my web history, I would casually ask them to pound sand (as should everyone!). But if the agent was accompanied with someone from my employer, I would eagerly cart up every single device in my home and offer to carry it out to their vehicle (as I fear most would). It smells like someone is taking massive investigative shortcuts, at very significant cost to the accused. Then again, I can’t even fathom the upside for the FBI.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
rubyist5eva 5y ago
Did they have a warrant? Never talk to the police without counsel, refuse all searches without warrants, "we might think you went on a website" is not probable cause, you have a right to an attorney and silence.
sandworm101 5y ago
Do you work for a government agency or contractor? That might explain why they contacted your employer so readily.
NmAmDa 5y ago
Imagine being a muslim in such case. Trying to convince them that this can be a mix-up ( which is possible easily) won't be successful.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Imagine being a muslim and e.g. having a kid visiting those sites. Or just going there out of intellectual curiosity, like how a leftie might read Main Kampf to check what that shit is. You can end up in a very bad position...
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    A couple years after 9/11, my father and I had donated to the Holy Land foundation. The IRS proceeded to audit me (16 years old) and my $8k a year woodselling business I had with my dad. You tell me.
    - nicogetz 5y ago
      That's absolutely fucked. The whole story of the Holy Land Foundation being railroaded and labeled as terrorists when all they did was advocate for human rights of Palestinians...it's an incredibly chilling story. To hear that those who merely donated to a worthy cause were also then audited...the outrageous injustice makes my blood boil.
      - selimthegrim 5y ago
        That’s better than my friends who were having their phones randomly tapped
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
vbezhenar 5y ago
Is it prohibited to visit those websites? I once was interested to understand the way radicals think, to read about their arguments, so I spent some time hanging around some radical websites.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  To quote a Dartmouth history professor who taught a class on the subject: "if you don't get randomly selected for a search on your next flight you aren't doing your homework" It's not prohibited but they notice and subject you to harassment by the system at every action with every part of the system that is integrated with their database.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    This seems like hyperbole.
- lrvick 5y ago
  I was visited by the FBI for doing security research that made them at least pretend to assume I was a blackhat they wanted to take down. Use Tor browser if you are going to research anything a criminal might regardless of pure motives. If you so much as want to research lock picking, use Tor. ISP traffic logs can and will be twisted against you in a court of law.
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    I openly participate in locksport communities and I haven't had any visits from the FBI.
    - comboy 5y ago
      I'm fairly confident that those agencies use context in an automated manner to get any meaningful results. So "keyword" (could be a word, domain or some other pattern) X may trigger only if Y and Z was already triggered. And some keyword A may only trigger if B was NOT present. This way you can distinguish doctors, reporters or people studying history or chemistry from those who plan something. Or e.g. ML applied to patterns over time. Globally. And yes I do not like it at all, HN is full of people that may likely research some kind of bomb, religion or whatever else out of pure curiosity, but since there are not many such people it can be problem in court one day. Mix in some Snowden, your hardware stack, gag orders and the fact that we have more laws that anybody can read and you may feel like watching some stupid memes.
tw04 5y ago
I’ll be the dissenting voice and say this reads like a “sow discord in the US 101”. Why on earth would the FBI bring both the police and a “threat assessment” coordinator from your work to interview you? Why would your workplace ever agree to it? That screams lawsuit waiting to happen. And on that note, why didn’t you sue your workplace for harassment? Whether you’re religious or not isn’t any of their business and is a protected class.
- lrvick 5y ago
  A decade ago the FBI harassed me at my home waking me up from sleeping twice and at a past employer before on entirely unfounded claims. They didn't care what the consequences were for targeting someone innocent. They also made nasty threats like "Someone has to go down for this, and if you help us collect intel on your industry peers we suspect then someone else can be that person" I told them politely to go die in a fire because I was not about to help them harass other innocent people but it was terrifying none the less that they seemingly had the power to end my whole universe. I became convinced through that ordeal that the FBI is a deeply corrupt organization that creates pressure to close cases by any means needed. The OPs post seems totally believable and consistent with stories I have heard from others, particularly if they work for an organization that has the US government as a customer like a defense contractor.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Someone has to go down for this The so called "justice" system, I guess.
- _xnmw 5y ago
  You're incredibly naive if you think this kind of stuff doesn't happen all the time since 9/11. I personally know several people with similar stories in the US.
  - tw04 5y ago
    You know several people whose employers sent someone to their house with FBI agents to harass them about their religious beliefs?? And none of them sued? I’m not surprised at all that the FBI is harassing people, I find it incredibly hard to believe a private business would touch the situation with a 4,000 foot pole. They have absolutely nothing to gain and massive liability.
aero-glide2 5y ago
I never use a VPN. That changes today.
- fsflover 5y ago
  You should use Tor instead. With VPN, you just shift your browsing history from one place to another.
- unobatbayar 5y ago
  Or worse yet, the VPN provider can sell your data. Build your own VPN https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn
darkhorn 5y ago
This is why you and everyone should use DNS over HTTPS (DoH). Next day they might visit you to ask you why you are visiting an opposition party web site.
- pnut 5y ago
  Please disambiguate acronyms in the absence of context.
- smolder 5y ago
  How exactly is DoH a protection? Wouldn't they just see that as a red flag? Then, get the data from cloudflare or whomever.
  - darkhorn 5y ago
    Most of the time they log your plain DNS queries. But DoH is encrypted, thus they won't be able to log your DNS queries. Cloudflare is not the only DoH provider. There are many. If you want you can grab a several lines of PHP code and create your own DoH link in another country. Becouse DoH is https they cannot distinguish it from normal https. Of course if the use deep packet analyses tool they will know what website you are visiting but they are not being used widely but are used to target specific people. To sum up; DoH is better than plain text DNS queris.
austincheney 5y ago
> We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. I am most curious why you believe that is a defense against radicalization. In the US that is perhaps the most common demographic for radicalization of any type.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Radical to him only goes before Islamic terrorism apparently
jtdev 5y ago
The FBI is a criminal organization. Just look at the history the FBI if you think that’s a radical statement.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

That's extremely disturbing. Accessing some random website should never cause police to show up. They should never even know what you did. That's like keeping tabs on what books people read and raiding somebody's house because they looked up how bombs are made.

wbl 5y ago

The only words you should ever say to the FBI "on advice of counsel I am taking the fifth".

ChrisKnott 5y ago
This is awful advice for this specific situation. OP apparently managed to clear up the mistake without much bother by speaking to them (although they were understandably shaken up by the experience). This presumably wouldn't have happened if they'd done what you suggest.
- P_I_Staker 5y ago
  On the other hand, they could accuse OP of lying (something that's highly subjective), which is a serious federal crime.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Not speaking to law enforcement outside the presence of your attorney is excellent advice. There's no downside to having the attorney there, and potentially life shattering downsides to attempt otherwise.

giantg2 5y ago

It absolutely can.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace" "I feared that I may lose my job." I understand that police/FBI have to conduct investigation. What dont understand is involvement of the employer , it's extremely disturbing - you have not been convincted, you have not been charged, you are not even a suspect or accused of anything at this point - how is your private life the business of your employer? Why is your privacy being breached and livehood being placed at risk? Surely the FBI is not allowed to publicise random dirt they find on innocent people?

IIAOPSW 5y ago
The FBI still has buildings named after J Edgar Hoover. That should tell you everything you need to know about their institutional respect for justice and due process.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 5y ago
  For non-americans, what was J Edgar Hoover known for?
  - black6 5y ago
    Turning the FBI into a blackmail operation.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Investigation_of_subversion_and_radicals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Investigation_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Reaction_to_civil_rights_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover#Reaction_to_ci...
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    I'm also not an American - but as far as I've read - massive abuse of power in using the FBI to spy on political rivals, illegal wiretapping, illegal surveillance of US congressmen and even presidents, running the FBI while they were doing extremely controversial programs like COINTELPRO and programs and investigations that tried to hinder the civil rights movement, etc.

sjs382 5y ago

> and a 'threat assessment' coordinator from my workplace. What was the reason for this? What type of workplace?

akira2501 5y ago
I'm assuming any workplace which requires a government security clearance to enter and work in.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

It's (scarily) interesting that they react with actual personal attendance based purely on a very limited set of electronic information. From your further description: > We are not religious (at all). We do not attend church, synagogue or mosque. We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. Would not the FBI have been able to any amount of background searching (read: further electronic information gathering), that would be less effort-intensive than getting arranging a 'threat assessment' coordinator from throw_away_dgs' actual workplace and a local police officer for an in-person door-knock. If such background checks were performed, then they either don't have much data or their threat weightings are set to red-scare levels of paranoia. Either way, it's scary. Unless there's more to the story.

Terry_Roll 5y ago
> It's (scarily) interesting that they react with actual personal attendance based purely on a very limited set of electronic information. Either their intel is better than they let on and didnt think they would be walking into an ambush or they are more stupid than we think.
- CrazyCatDog 5y ago
  Actually, I think they had no intel. You NEED intel for a judge to order a subpoena—and if a subpoena was issued, the ISP would open their firehose, and overwhelm the FBI with evidence suggesting that there’s nothing to investigate. And having visited extremist sites a handful of times—even if advertantly—is probably not going to meet the threshold for a subpoena. If the FBI visited me and casually asked about my web history, I would casually ask them to pound sand (as should everyone!). But if the agent was accompanied with someone from my employer, I would eagerly cart up every single device in my home and offer to carry it out to their vehicle (as I fear most would). It smells like someone is taking massive investigative shortcuts, at very significant cost to the accused. Then again, I can’t even fathom the upside for the FBI.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago

rubyist5eva 5y ago

Did they have a warrant? Never talk to the police without counsel, refuse all searches without warrants, "we might think you went on a website" is not probable cause, you have a right to an attorney and silence.

sandworm101 5y ago

Do you work for a government agency or contractor? That might explain why they contacted your employer so readily.

NmAmDa 5y ago

Imagine being a muslim in such case. Trying to convince them that this can be a mix-up ( which is possible easily) won't be successful.

coldtea 5y ago
Imagine being a muslim and e.g. having a kid visiting those sites. Or just going there out of intellectual curiosity, like how a leftie might read Main Kampf to check what that shit is. You can end up in a very bad position...
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  A couple years after 9/11, my father and I had donated to the Holy Land foundation. The IRS proceeded to audit me (16 years old) and my $8k a year woodselling business I had with my dad. You tell me.
  - nicogetz 5y ago
    That's absolutely fucked. The whole story of the Holy Land Foundation being railroaded and labeled as terrorists when all they did was advocate for human rights of Palestinians...it's an incredibly chilling story. To hear that those who merely donated to a worthy cause were also then audited...the outrageous injustice makes my blood boil.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      That’s better than my friends who were having their phones randomly tapped
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

vbezhenar 5y ago

Is it prohibited to visit those websites? I once was interested to understand the way radicals think, to read about their arguments, so I spent some time hanging around some radical websites.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
To quote a Dartmouth history professor who taught a class on the subject: "if you don't get randomly selected for a search on your next flight you aren't doing your homework" It's not prohibited but they notice and subject you to harassment by the system at every action with every part of the system that is integrated with their database.
- q1w2 5y ago
  This seems like hyperbole.
lrvick 5y ago
I was visited by the FBI for doing security research that made them at least pretend to assume I was a blackhat they wanted to take down. Use Tor browser if you are going to research anything a criminal might regardless of pure motives. If you so much as want to research lock picking, use Tor. ISP traffic logs can and will be twisted against you in a court of law.
- throaway46546 5y ago
  I openly participate in locksport communities and I haven't had any visits from the FBI.
  - comboy 5y ago
    I'm fairly confident that those agencies use context in an automated manner to get any meaningful results. So "keyword" (could be a word, domain or some other pattern) X may trigger only if Y and Z was already triggered. And some keyword A may only trigger if B was NOT present. This way you can distinguish doctors, reporters or people studying history or chemistry from those who plan something. Or e.g. ML applied to patterns over time. Globally. And yes I do not like it at all, HN is full of people that may likely research some kind of bomb, religion or whatever else out of pure curiosity, but since there are not many such people it can be problem in court one day. Mix in some Snowden, your hardware stack, gag orders and the fact that we have more laws that anybody can read and you may feel like watching some stupid memes.

tw04 5y ago

I’ll be the dissenting voice and say this reads like a “sow discord in the US 101”. Why on earth would the FBI bring both the police and a “threat assessment” coordinator from your work to interview you? Why would your workplace ever agree to it? That screams lawsuit waiting to happen. And on that note, why didn’t you sue your workplace for harassment? Whether you’re religious or not isn’t any of their business and is a protected class.

lrvick 5y ago
A decade ago the FBI harassed me at my home waking me up from sleeping twice and at a past employer before on entirely unfounded claims. They didn't care what the consequences were for targeting someone innocent. They also made nasty threats like "Someone has to go down for this, and if you help us collect intel on your industry peers we suspect then someone else can be that person" I told them politely to go die in a fire because I was not about to help them harass other innocent people but it was terrifying none the less that they seemingly had the power to end my whole universe. I became convinced through that ordeal that the FBI is a deeply corrupt organization that creates pressure to close cases by any means needed. The OPs post seems totally believable and consistent with stories I have heard from others, particularly if they work for an organization that has the US government as a customer like a defense contractor.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Someone has to go down for this The so called "justice" system, I guess.
_xnmw 5y ago
You're incredibly naive if you think this kind of stuff doesn't happen all the time since 9/11. I personally know several people with similar stories in the US.
- tw04 5y ago
  You know several people whose employers sent someone to their house with FBI agents to harass them about their religious beliefs?? And none of them sued? I’m not surprised at all that the FBI is harassing people, I find it incredibly hard to believe a private business would touch the situation with a 4,000 foot pole. They have absolutely nothing to gain and massive liability.

aero-glide2 5y ago

I never use a VPN. That changes today.

fsflover 5y ago
You should use Tor instead. With VPN, you just shift your browsing history from one place to another.
unobatbayar 5y ago
Or worse yet, the VPN provider can sell your data. Build your own VPN https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn https://github.com/hwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn

darkhorn 5y ago

This is why you and everyone should use DNS over HTTPS (DoH). Next day they might visit you to ask you why you are visiting an opposition party web site.

pnut 5y ago
Please disambiguate acronyms in the absence of context.
smolder 5y ago
How exactly is DoH a protection? Wouldn't they just see that as a red flag? Then, get the data from cloudflare or whomever.
- darkhorn 5y ago
  Most of the time they log your plain DNS queries. But DoH is encrypted, thus they won't be able to log your DNS queries. Cloudflare is not the only DoH provider. There are many. If you want you can grab a several lines of PHP code and create your own DoH link in another country. Becouse DoH is https they cannot distinguish it from normal https. Of course if the use deep packet analyses tool they will know what website you are visiting but they are not being used widely but are used to target specific people. To sum up; DoH is better than plain text DNS queris.

austincheney 5y ago

> We are lower middle class white Americans born and raised in the USA and have never traveled outside the country. I am most curious why you believe that is a defense against radicalization. In the US that is perhaps the most common demographic for radicalization of any type.

selimthegrim 5y ago
Radical to him only goes before Islamic terrorism apparently

jtdev 5y ago

The FBI is a criminal organization. Just look at the history the FBI if you think that’s a radical statement.