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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.
Hi,
if my wife gets murdered, will it make me a suspect if I've googled for "ReiserFS"?
bye,
Till
IANAL, but.. why not?
"Is that dad? Either that or Batman's really let himself go."
Not much different from admitting evidence suggesting an alleged had checked out a book on poisons from the library when the stand accused of a poisoning death.
What I want to know is whether researching the search histories of the accused is the status quo.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Or alternatively, don't kill anyone?
Somehow that seems simpler to me.
Mmm'k - so it's AskSlashdot next time?
www.sjbaker.org
- "Steve Ballmer" + Zune + squirt + Naked
- Walrus Porn
- enriched uranium for sale
- "girl" + "myspace" + "16 and under" + "sex" + "I am not an FBI agent"
- Latex frog fetish
- "How can I keep the feds from discovering my vast marijuana growing operation?"
- "genital warts" + "cures" + "sandpaper"
- "nitroglycerin" + "subway schedule" + "best escape routes"
- anthrax + "crop dusting license"
- "Cowboy Neal in Bondage"
- Crow T. TrollbotSure you can. But you might be in trouble when your ex-wife is found tied up in a grave with an ether smell coming from the box.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
All the information used against that woman was obtained by the computer forensic team after they seized her computer using the right procedure, obtaining a warrant first, and keeping the whole chain of evidence rules.
You guys need to remember that only because it is digital it doesn't mean it is less relevant or admissible. Had she asked a doctor what is the lethal dose of a certain substance, or what are the less detectable poisons, or similar suspicious questions like those, this doctor would certainly be called as a prosecution witness, and his deposition would certainly be admissible and relevant. Why then the same pursuit of knowledge would not be admissible or relevant? Because it is not a real doctor that got asked, but the internet?
Notice that I'm not saying that it is sufficient evidence to nail her, as IANAL and I don't know the details of the case. But at least admissible and relevant it is.
IAALS? I am a lawyer's sidekick?
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
The latter is much scarier IMHO. I don't want anyone to commit murder and get away with it, but, I didn't realize that Google searches could be traced from their systems backwards to you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
i know he can keep a secret. he helped me out that time i woke up in a strange hotel room in denver next to a dead hooker.
as luck would have it, getting rid of dead hookers is a common problem and there are many useful articles on wikihow. i can tell you from experience that your company's helpdesk is NOT very cooperative in a situation like that.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Before you shoot someone, do a bunch of searches for "poisons". That way the cops will expect you to poison someone and when they find the body they will be all like "Welp, he wasn't poisoned, so I guess you didn't do it".
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."
As a regular watcher of "Law and Order" and "CSI: Miami", I can assure you that the law does not work that way.
Just one question here: If the RIAA can't prove who was using a computer for filesharing, how can someone prove who was using the computer for Google searching? Even if you have the computer and the searches still on it, does that say who was at the keyboard? Consider, maybe the husband was researching how to kill his wife, she found out, and got him first.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think there's any need to subpoena Google. Just look at the browser history -- the search terms you google are clearly visible -- so an entry of http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how+to+kill+s omeone is probably what they found. You authenticate the chain of custody of the computer where you retrieved the browser history (probably via a forensic image of the computer), and you have testimony from the investigator that the computer was retrieved from xyz location and handled in a forensically sound manner, etc. etc.
Once you have the foundation of the browser history entry, then you introduce expert testimony regarding what that history entry means -- in other words, that someone using that computer (and perhaps logged in via a certain user profile) went to Google and searched for those terms.
In this manner, it doesn't go in via the party admission hearsay exception.
On cross-examination, the other side could attack the chain of custody and could probably elicit admissions that the evidence just shows that the computer was used and that it could have been someone besides the defendant doing the searching. And then there's always the possibility of forgery / planted evidence -- but with the forensic image (which is usually hashed) and the chain-of-custody logs, you'd probably have a hard time. All of this stuff goes to the WEIGHT of the evidence, and not to its admissibility.
IAAL.
Careful what you're clicking!
gtkaml.org
I'm using your router, so while I'm not anonymous I am not me either. :p
Seriously I'm beginning to think that the best defense is to have an open WiFi connection and claim to be a "data communist" when confronted with IP logs.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Agreed.
Nearly all evidence is circumstantial. They could find the gun in your hand - all that means is you picked it up. Not that you fired it. They could find gunshot residue on your hand - all that means is you fired it, not that you fired it at the victim.
I'd hate to be that innocent bastard who stumbles over a gun and picks it up only to have it accidently discharge into the floor, before seeing his very recently murdered ex-girlfriend lying just a few feet away.
Similarly, finding this in her browser history doesn't make her guilty but it sure closes the window of 'reasonable doubt' a little more.