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Don't Google "How To Commit Murder" Before Killing
An anonymous reader alerts us to a murder trial in New Jersey in which Google and MSN searches were used against a woman accused of killing her husband. In the days before the murder, prosecutors say the defendant searched for "How To Commit Murder," "instant poisons," "undetectable poisons," "fatal digoxin doses," and gun laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Her husband was killed with a gun procured in Pennsylvania. The crime occurred in 2004; of course, people now know to be careful about their searches.
But, oddly enough, I've seen what the courts allow the RIAA & MPAA to submit as evidence (server logs with IP addresses) to prosecute people and, at least in those cases, that's all the evidence they need!
Okay, to explain what has probably been said on slashdot a million times already, the burden of proof in a CIVIL case, like the suits by the RIAA and the MPAA, is considerably lower then the burden of proof in a CRIMINAL case. Now, I cannot recall a case yet, where the RIAA or MPAA have actually won in court. Most of them, as I recall, are settled out of court for considerably less, or the RIAA drops the suit when someone fights back hard enough and starts poking holes in their flaky evidence.
Considering this, am I shocked that a legally requisitioned computer can be submitted & used as evidence? Not really--though I should be. It's a shame what the "Justice System" is becoming these days.
Why should you be shocked? If you commit a crime and are charged with said crime, why shouldn't a legally obtained warrant allow a jurisdiction to seize your computer and review it for potential evidence? If anything, the courts would be keeping up in that regard, instead of keeping notes or writing messages on paper, criminal might be keeping track of information on their personal computer. In this particular case, they obviously determined that she was searching the internet and found out WHAT she was supposedly searching for. It might not convict her by itself, but it would show a level of pre-meditation, if the jury sees it that way.
I guess I could stretch this and look for people who search for "to build a fire" and charge them with all unsolved arsons in their area. Boy scouts & Jack London fans beware!
You have no probable cause. This sort of blanket searching would never fly in most courts and might only be allowed under convoluted items in the PATRIOT ACT. You would first have to suspect the individual of arson, have sufficient evidence to get a court issued warrant, find enough evidence on the PC to get a subpoena for the information from Google, and subsequently add evidence to the case. I am willing to bet this wasn't the beginning of their case.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I read TFA. It states that a forensic analyist went through at least one of eight computers that the defendant is suspected of using. The one in question is from her home, if I recall. If the report is accurate (probably close enough) and complete (who knows), neither her ISP nor Google were involved in determining what the person using that computer was searching for.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Well, having had my computer taken by the cops as "evidence", I've learned several important lessons:
1) The cops have _no_ sense of humor. Thanks to Fark, I had This, and This in my cache. Apparently, I'm now into terrorism and child trafficing.
2) EFS doesn't help. Microsoft's Encrypting File System doesn't encrypt anything that can't be broken in seconds with the password (and usually minutes/hours without).
So, especially for farkers, get TrueCrypt. It's free, and open-source. Then, get TCTEMP. It makes it so your temporary files encrypted with a random key. Restart, and they all go "poof". Then get TCGina. You get to encrypt your home directory (and history, documents, etc.) - it automatically mounts it when you login.
Use AES/SHA-1 as your encryption scheme, and pick a good password. If you're _really_ paranoid, grab Shred Agent (wipes files you delete automatically), and Distrust (a firefox addon that automatically deletes your history and cache for you). Nobody is _ever_ going to be recovering your data (even you, if you forget your password).
If you are looking for a quick, easy, fool-proof way to wipe your hard drive so _nobody_ will _ever_ recover _anything_ from it, make yourself a DBAN disk. Easy to use, and it gets the job done right.
Actually, she didn't have the savvy to flush her cache.
Actually, she'd have done much better to degauss her hard drive after the dirty deed.
Actually, she'd have done much better not to have killed anyone in the first place.
As a detective friend of mine once said, "Yer criminals'r mostly stupid - it's why they're criminals."
sigs, as if you care.