[Karunamon]

Fine, but as law enforcement, if you receive a tip that someone is acting suspiciously, it is downright irresponsible for that tip to not be followed up on.

Sounds like the problem here was the employer, not the cops. Heck, it sounds like they didn't even have a warrant to search - they asked if they could come in and the person said yes.

[ollysb]

I think the point is that this didn't used to constitute suspicious activity. The range of suspicious activity is growing and growing. Something that no one has really talked about yet is the effect recent revelations have had on the overton window (the narrow range of opinions the public will accept)[1]. Having such extreme behaviour exhibited by governments has the effect of making previously questionable policies seem more moderate and acceptable.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

[Karunamon]

I'm not so sure, really. If a reasonably well respected employer phoned in a tip about an employee looking up what they thought were terrorist-y things on a work computer (we'll never know what they actually phoned in, I'd love to know though!), I'd have expected that to generate an investigation for quite some time now.

The worst I can possibly think of to accuse the cops with in this case is showing up with too many people. One or two uniformed officers was all that was necessary.

[jaredmcateer]

We don't know the whole story, when the police interviewed the employers they may have described the employee as unstable or disgruntled which, with the internet searches, warranted a visit to the former employee. This story reminds me of a story by Adam Savage [1] where he was ordering a movie prop and received a call by the FBI and it was quickly dismissed but the agent still had to follow up the tip.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7I0...