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Google Searches Used in Murder Trial?
mcrbids writes "Well, the details are a bit scant, but it seems that the content of Google searches were used to help establish intent in a murder trial. Will police in the future simply serve a subpoena to Google to find out what you've been thinking about? While this use of that information makes sense, at what point does your privacy give way to public concerns? Should police be able to search through your search history for "questionable" searches before you've been arrested for a crime, and what effect would this have on the health of society?"
that a lot of bored people in the supposed privacy of their own home will search for a lot of crazy things that in 99.99% of cases they have no intention of carrying out.
"Should police be able to search through your search history for "questionable" searches..."
Yes they should. I think that using a search engine to research methods of breaking someone's neck and water levels in nearby lakes is evidence that should be available to officers trying to find out who broke someone's neck and dumped them in a lake.
While this evidence alone is not enough to incriminate someone it does provide extra evidence to lead to their future incarcination. Lets face it, things add up and being able to find the pieces of a puzzle is an important part of researching a crime.
You can't arrest someone for looking at certain things but knowing they looked at those things is important in figuring out if they did commit a crime.
I dont see why police shouldn't be allowed to search through your google history- or anything else on your computer for that matter, just provided that they have a warrant. It's no different from searching through your house or any of your personal belongings, which is perfectly fine provided that they have a warrant or reason to do so.
How would Google know what someone has been thinking about?
Gee, based on just the searches that I do? They could figure out that I work for a mental health agency, that I used to work for an insurance agency, that I'm considering getting engaged, that I perfer credit unions to banks, that I've filed or am considering filing bankruptcy, etc, etc, etc. Don't even get me started about my porn perferences ;)
I can't even say that they couldn't pin all that down to an actual name any more either since I'm using G-mail and it receives the same cookie that google.com does.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have not read the article (look at my UID, I've obviously spent many years being conditioned to not read articles). However, was this information gathered via google or just by searching this guy's cache? Or was it gathered by getting his login information for his google account from him (or his computer) and then doing a search of his history?
The reason I ask is that google talks about how the information they gather (including in search history, I guess?) is aggregated and in no way identifiable and linkable to an individual. So, then, how could a subpeona to google result in anything useful being returned?
However, this isn't a huge deal, really. I'm not one of those detestable "if you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" idiots, but the thing to learn here is that it's okay to look up "snap" and "neck" and even "how to murder someone" via google or any other engine. However, if you actually ARE going to murder someone, you probably should not look up "snap" and "neck" or "how to murder someone" via google. Or, rather, if the authorities are trying to tie a suspect to a murder, he is not going to be convicted soley on a few google searches. It will just be additional circumstancial evidence to add to the pot.
These sort of things only become a problem when they start seeking out suspects and disrupting innocent people's lives because the people made particular searches in a search engine. So rather than saying "We're pretty sure this guy killed this other person and we want to see his google history", they start going through all of google's data and investigating every person with suspiciously strange search keywords just in case whoever they are have committed whatever crime against whatever unknowned victims and are suspects soley because of the information they sought.
Who hasn't done some weird ass searches, though? Hell, I've done searches on the old "26 ways to kill a person" howto. That doesn't mean I'm going to do it. But if I've killed someone and they then use my searches as *additional* evidence in my trial, there's no problem with that. Just don't go out hunting blindly through every individual that's done that search to pin a crime on them.
Note to self: Remember to do a few leading searches on the computer of the person I am trying to frame for a crime.
emt 377 emt 4
Libraries never have kept information of what you had checked out once it is returned (unlike Amazon that has a record of all your purchases). I've been working with library circulation systems for thirty years, and ALWAYS there is an RFP requirement that "the system shall not keep a record after the item is returned. The link between patron and item must be broken..."
(Full disclosure statement: Patron history is allowed and kept for so-called "Outreach patrons" who enjoy a personalized level of library service because they are homebound. They tend to be elderly and forgetful, and they tend to read genres like romances or westerns. They also are voracious readers who can easily 'read out' a collection. This "patron history" allows their caregiver to avoid giving them the same book on the very next visit. They just wait a couople and then maybe they won't remember anyway.)
During the last fit of hysteria over the Patriot Act our Board of Trustees even wanted to know the precise backup policy and suggested we keep FEWER BACKUPS! Yes, it is possible to restore the system state to four months ago and read what people had checked out then, but only if you disrupted a 24/7 system for a couple of days to do it. Beyond that it is pretty much impossible because the tapes get written over (Our variation on father/grandfather is Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri-1, Fri-2, Fri-3, Fri-4, Fri-5 to accommodate five-Friday months. The most you can stretch is about 4 months with this scheme. The dailies are written over in 7 days. The Fri-1-Fri-4 are written over the next month, and the Fri-5 is written over the next month that has five Fridays). Fortunately reason prevailed and they didn't mess with my backups.
The tapes themselves are not going to help the cops. It's not as if the information is linear on the tapes. Library databases are incredibly complex with multiple tables, layers, and pointers. The information on the tapes is useless unless it is run through the programs themselves in exactly the right manner on a machine configured EXACTLY like the one it came off of (in terms of rev levels of the programs, config options, etc.)
I'd be perfectly happy giving the FBI or the NSA or whomever a full backup copy from my database. It would cost them about a million dollars and several months just to get to the point of making sense out of it, assuming they hired the right people to put it all back together.
The only practical way for an 'authority' to go back in time on check outs is to subpoena the library and force them to do it, in which case it would be national news in 24 hours. It would be easy to check on what you have checked out right now, and for that all you need is a subpoena.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Evidence like this is usually used in conjunction with other evidence. Like if they think you set off a pipe bomb they could use reciepts of you buying PVC pipe, duct tape, and a bunch of nails, a pound of C4 found in your apartment, along with a search on "how to build a pipe bomb" to get a conviction.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
He could have browsed from a live CD and not left a trail. I wonder how many crimes are being solved because criminals don't know how to take a few simple security steps?
That won't help if law enforcement subpoenas Google, or any other website for that matter (yeah, I know that in this case Google wasn't involved, but I could easily imagine it happening). Probably the best thing to do is use someone else's open access point, with your live CD on your laptop.
yeah exactly, this is a very stupid summary just trying to troll for some reactionary privacy outcries. Guess what? if you get arrested for a crime you're privacy is going to be invaded a whole lot more than just "what you searched for at google". Your phone records get inspected, your computer gets inspected, heck, you're house gets searched. Somehow we are supposed to be concerned that your internet searches can be accessed when the police have already arrested you after getting an arrest warrent and invaded your home after getting a search warrent? Since when is your behavoir on the internet more private than what you have in your own closet?
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR