[e_y_]

The guy's face has been plastered over the news for several days and there's a $60,000 reward. Getting a tip from a fast food worker is very plausible.

More plausible in my opinion than the FBI having some kind of agreement with McDonald's to access their store surveillance network in real time.

[jcgrillo]

People vastly overestimate the ability of giant bureaucracies to keep secrets. It only works if a few people are in on it (that's part of what compartmentalization is for). I'm always suspicious of claims that federal agencies are colluding with companies for the purposes of mass surveillance because while I trust those agencies to keep secrets, I absolutely do not trust the vast majority of companies to do so. There are narrow exceptions--defense industry, telecommunications, aerospace industry--but mostly secrets like that are hard to keep unless your org is built around keeping secrets. The orgs I've worked for are the opposite of compartmentalized. I doubt McDonalds' software engineering org is, but I'd be curious to be surprised!