WTF

Hopey changey:

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi's apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he'd done nothing to merit attention from authorities. Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he'd been under FBI surveillance for three to six months.

When the FBI left Afifi's apartment, they told him, "You don't need to call your lawyer. Don't worry, you're boring." Um.

Suffice it to say, Afifi did call his attorney, who "said this kind of tracking is more egregious than the kind her office usually sees."

"The idea that it escalates to this level is unusual," said Zahra Billoo. "We take about one new case each week relating to FBI or law enforcement visits [to clients]. Generally they come to the individual's house or workplace, and there are issues that arise from that."

However, she said that after learning about Afifi's experience, other lawyers in her organization told her they knew of two people in Ohio who also recently discovered tracking devices on their vehicles.

My head is swimming with reactions to this story, but the thought that keeps floating to the top is the bitter irony that about half this country thinks our president is a secret Muslim trying to covertly turn the US into a radical Islamic nation, while, in reality, the FBI under his administration's governance is harassing US-born Arab-Americans for no discernible reason.

[H/T to Shaker Selby.]