Explanation of code found online
The comment form of a blog is not an appropriate place to publish source
code, as the content-management system (Wordpress here) quite often does
some destructive transformations. For example, here:
Serial.println(“2 Second LOCK OUT: No rapidly repeating readings”);

Wordpress tried to be “helpful” and replaced the ASCII quotes (&quot;) with
typographic quotes (“ and ”), which makes the line non-compilable.
As for the line you are asking about:
if ((touch_sensor_value  (TOUCH_timeSeconds * 1000)))

it is likely missing a less-than sign (&lt;), as those are often stripped
from user-generated content for security reasons. I don't know why some
of those signs went through the filter, maybe it has something to do
with the white space surrounding them, but this is pure guess.
Given that the code has been destructively mangled, your options are
either to guess from the context, or post a comment asking for
clarification.