If anybody wonders why I have a bag over my head today, it's because I feel like such an idiot for falling hook, line & sinker for a big Internet hoax, and then (making things much worse) stubbornly doubling down.
That story about the "terrorism task force" using NSA-collected data about searches for pressure cookers and backpacks? Well, it was a hoax (it's now hard to see it any other way): http://techcrunch.com/... .
Indeed, the blog writer Michele Catalano, who started this nonsense, has confirmed it as a hoax, as linked in that linked article. (Of course, nobody is ever going to be able to believe anything she writes. Maybe I'm being duped again and that confirmation isn't sincere. Smoke and mirrors here.)
So yesterday's two big rec list diaries (one by me) were fundamentally wrong, and the debunking rec list diary was right.
Apologies to all. I really feel like an idiot. I like to think of myself as fairly hard-headed and skeptical, but I totally stepped in it on this one, as did thousands of others around the Internet.
Incidentally, Catalano's original post is so inconsistent in so many details from the police statement that it's really hard to believe she wasn't deliberately trying to mislead people, taking advantage of people's legitimate concerns about surveillance. It's infuriating to be swindled like this.
I'm not going to painfully go through all three big diaries and make all the individual apologies that arguably are due--but please trust that I'm sincerely contrite, and furious with myself.
UPDATE: Let me also specifically apologize for some of the nasty, self-righteous comments I made during arguments in those diaries, some of the worst of which are quoted in the thread here.