Could Cops Use Google As Pre-Cogs?

theodp writes "Remember the Pre-Cogs in Minority Report? Slate's Will Oremus does, and wonders if Google could similarly help the police apprehend criminals based on foreknowledge collected from searches. Oremus writes: 'At around 3:45 a.m. on March 24, someone in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., used a mobile phone to Google "chemicals to passout a person." Then the person searched Ask.com for "making people faint." Then Google again, for "ways to kill people in their sleep," "how to suffocate someone," and "how to poison someone." The phone belonged to 23-year-old Nicole Okrzesik. Later that morning, police allege, she and her boyfriend strangled 19-year-old Juliana Mensch as she slept on the floor of their apartment.' In theory, Oremus muses, Google or Ask.com could have flagged Okrzesik's search queries as suspicious and dispatched cops to the scene before Mensch's assailants had the chance to do her in." I bet you're already thinking of just a few reasons why this might not such a good idea.

Comments

bad idea

[beh]

Hmm - what reasons could there be to legitimately do these kinds of searches?

  - checking whether something seen on some crime drama actually makes sense
  - checking whether a stupid newspaper story makes sense
  - checking whether an outrageous story from a neighbour makes any sense
  - looking for ideas to write a crime novel
  - learning about the effects of certain things, say, for medical interests (medical students)

Either way - what people do should be what people do on their own; locking people up because
they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent. And where will you stop?

Will you allow someone to a gas station and fill up their car after they had a bad fight with their
partner, whom they know will have to cross a road somewhere in the next hour? Or should you lock
them up after the fight? (independently of whether you or your partner started the fight)?

How about filling your car, and going for drinks later - having a car with a full tank of gas at
your disposal afterwards? Time to lock you up?

Sure, at a guess, looking up 'ways to kill people in their sleep' I would also think makes you
more likely a potential murderer than filling up your car. But, where do you draw the line on
what's legitimate and what isn't?

Also, maybe after you read how painful or possibly difficult your goal is - who's to say that
reading about it might not actually lead you to give up the thought? And then you still get
locked up because of something you looked up, where the result of the search itself already
deterred you (though, obviously, that can't be seen in any google search strings - you just
stop searching)...

Also, the only goal you'd reach is that now a potential murderer has to break in somewhere
only to look up how to murder someone - and then the wrong person would get arrested...
(...which might give the best possible version - look it up on the victim's computer - get them arrested!)

There are so many ways to screw this up - as bad as it is, until someone _actually_ tries
to go through with it, don't interfere...

The pre-cog route will just make things a LOT worse for civil liberties / personal freedom.

Re:bad idea

[P-niiice]

What reasons could there be to legitimately do these kinds of searches is none of you damn business.

I search stuff I want to know all the time. I've searched some horrible, horrible things but never wanted to do them. This is ridiculous and should never be used. But of course, it will eventually. It had already been mentioned that searched using the word torrent would one day be seen as suspicious and possibly prosecuted.

Re:bad idea

[P-niiice]

and yes I didn't read the parent post but it is none of anyones business - i was that angry.

Re:bad idea

[idontgno]

Actually, you're both right, in the sense that (A) there are many "legitimate", non-suspicious reasons to search for "controversial" subjects, and (B) more importantly, no search has to justify its own "legitimacy" (which is your point) because of fundamental rights of privacy, particularly investigation without due process and probable cause.

GPP was suggesting perfectly good answers to a question. You're pointing out that the question shouldn't have to be answered at all without some other evidence-based reasonable suspicion.

Re:bad idea

[nurb432]

Or you are just curious.

I may be curious how a H-bomb works, but i don't have any plans on making one. ( even if i could.. )

Re:bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:bad idea

[AngryDeuce]

A million times this. I'm a Wikipedia junky (obligatory xkcd) that searches things out of raw curiosity with no applicable reason whatsoever. I've also done my share of looking at gore photos, crime scene photographs, things of that nature. I'm totally non-violent and would never hurt a fly, but if the police were to start looking at my search history and profiling me based on that alone, they'd probably want to keep a closer eye on me anyway "just in case".

Just because a particular subject interests me, that doesn't mean I'm going to emulate it. Morbid fascination does not equal intent, whether now or in the future.

It amazes me how many supposedly educated people would support things like this. This is basically just another step down the road to thought police and telescreens. Doubleplusungood.

Re:bad idea

[Yvanhoe]

Curiosity is a felony, please turn up to your closest police station.

Re:bad idea

[TWX]

Correct. Unless there's a very strong correlation that one behavior overwhelmingly leads to another that is a crime, then using one's research to attempt to predict a crime will lead to nothing more than the police showing up to essentially ask you if you're going to commit a crime. Even if you were, you simply say, "I'm sorry officer, but I have no legal obligation to speak with you on this or any other matter."

Seeing as how they can't really compel you to spend too much time with them until they arrest you, and if they do arrest you they must then provide you with legal counsel, this would not work in any way for a lot of potential criminals, as one's lawyer would also basically tell you to say nothing at all.

Until there's at least a crime-in-progress, you haven't done anything. Conspiracy to commit is difficult when there's no crime either, especially if there isn't even any materiel for a crime. Even then, one could research a crime, gather supplies for a crime, and be almost to the point of committing a crime, but then at the last moment, decide not to commit the crime. Still no crime has been committed.

Re:bad idea

[jbburks]

Yes

Re:bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

But, where do you draw the line on
what's legitimate and what isn't?

As a social problem I agree. Society can't handle this sort of process responsibly.

As a technical problem this is pretty trivial. You don't arrest them for their search results. You use this system to flag suspicions people so that wen a crime occurs you have another source of information at your disposal for finding the perpetrator because all else being equal, if there is a rape/murder than the guy who googled "where to buy chlorophorm" and "how do rape kits work" the week before is a more likely suspect than the guy who did not. And even if the information isn't useful in predicting guilt, it can be used to prove pre-meditation should you find the perpetrator through conventional means. You can also take a more pro-active approach and have a uniformed officer drop by for a chat with any of the more concerning "blips" to "show the flag" and hopefully prevent some portion of crimes just by reminding them of the consequences.

Re:bad idea

[OzPeter]

Or you are just curious.

I may be curious how a H-bomb works, but i don't have any plans on making one. ( even if i could.. )

Back in the 70's the magazine Electronics Australia did a 'Construction' article on how a terrorist could build a dirty bomb in a suburban house. I can't find any links to it right now, but it was interesting in the detail they went into. They mentioned at the time that the workers used to construct it would die from radiation exposure which came across as being an unusual expectation. However in this day an age of suicide bombers a bit of self sacrifice is the norm.

Re:bad idea

[nurb432]

A dirty bomb would be brain dead simple to build, and just use common sense. ( well, and lots of $ for the supplies and delivery system.... but complexity is about nil )

Re:bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me a socialist...

No, I'd call you a fascist, because that is what you are if you are not trolling and actually believe what you posted.

Re:bad idea

[ArsenneLupin]

Conspiracy to commit is difficult when there's no crime either

And moreoever, conspiracy takes at least two willing conspirators. I doubt that google could be considered to be a co-conspirator...: It's not a person, and even if it was, it didn't intentionally help in planing the crime.

Re:bad idea

[cpu6502]

It appears this is a RETROACTIVE search, not a search without cause. They are tracing the path of the killer, so they can use it as evidence in a trial.

As for precognition, RT News had a story back a few months ago about Google having enough information from billions of users to "predict" the future, similar to psychohistory in Asimov's short stories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGBpKhTWNQE

Re:bad idea

[Hatta]

Either way - what people do should be what people do on their own; locking people up because
they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent. And where will you stop?

We've already gone down this route. The entire War on Drug Users is predicated on the belief that if we allow people to do drugs they will do bad things. We've been doing this for decades, despite the lack of any evidence for that proposition.

How exactly is "you smoked crack, so you're likely to steal something, therefore you're going to jail" any different from "you searched for how to hotwire a car, so you're likely to steal something, therefore your'e going to jail"?

Re:bad idea

[zill]

I was about to google map "police station" to get the directions, but then I remember doing that search would make me a cop-killing police-station-bombing terrorist.

So now I'm caught in a catch-22: if I don't look up its location I'm a fugitive on the run. If I look up its location I would be plotting a terrorist attack.

Re:bad idea

[geekoid]

How do you know? This could very well be a good idea, or it could be useless.

I would like to see some data. How many people search for several way to make someone pass out? is it noise? is there strong correlation between the search and an incident happening?

When you are searching on a public network for information on how to harm someone , then yes, it is pother peoples business.
Let me know when you have you own private internet.

Just lie if you where zig-zagging down a public highway would also be my business... well everyone on that part of the highway.

Hypothetically, what if 25% of all people who makes more then 5 searches in a day regarding specific types of crime go on to commit that crime? 50% 75%?

And remember, I'm not talking about arresting. I'm talking about investigation. Meaning a law enforcement person goes and talks to them.
Oh, you are an author? Hell, maybe there is a popular crime drama that was on, so searches for that crime are disregarded for a week.

Re:bad idea

[beh]

The most I'd give is that the authorities should let you know that they are aware of your search - as an additional deterrent (since you know in advance, that the cops would suspect you _were_ anything to happen).

On the other hand - IF you did that, you end up with a who watches the watchers scenario - say, you'd work for the authorities, and you know your neighbour has searched 'how to kill the bitch and make it look like an accident'. If you had a grudge against her, you would have a great opportunity to kill her and frame him for it...

So, again, anyone knowing before the potential misdeed, that you were looking for something related on the internet is also in a position to be a perpetrator; i.e. the watcher should also be locked up.

There is a good reason it needs a judge to allow the police to start poking around in someone's private life - and that isn't easily given. You have to show a lot of probable cause / evidence for a judge to allow a wiretap -- why should search terms be handled any differently?

Re:bad idea

[TheLink]

In which case Google's investment and finance arm should be making tons of money. Not as in the "Google Finance" service, but the bunch who are investing Google's spare cash.

Re:bad idea

[geekoid]

Yes, but that's part of the pattern. SO you aren't likely.

But if you spent a week searching on how t get away with rape* out of no where, then maybe someone for social service should give you a call.

People, like you in this instance, think singly, and thing they are some exception and there pattern is oh so different from everyone elses.
You aren't, and is isn't.

*I chose rape, because almost all rapes involve methodicalness of planning of some sort, unlike more murders.

"Morbid fascination does not equal intent,"
correct, and everyone know it.

IT's because educated people can think more then in extremes? Because educated people can see that if there is strong enough correlation between a series of catch phrase an crimes it's worth checking it out?

By your argument, you shouldn't be pulled over if you are seen driving abnormally.

Re:bad idea

[Sperbels]

A million times this. I'm a Wikipedia junky (obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]) that searches things out of raw curiosity with no applicable reason whatsoever.

As am I. I've googled everything from how to make a nuclear bomb to necrophilia porn to how to make poisons, to how to start start a revolution, to how to hack computers....just to see what's out there.

As of this time, I have not built a nuke, collected any corpse porn, made any poison, overthrown any governments, or hacked any computers. I do write science fiction stories though, and I find this jumble of knowledge in my head is quite useful for concocting all sorts of interesting stories. No, I'm not published, no I don't write often, and I'm not any good either. I'd like to be though. And being able to research whatever I want might one day make that possible. If I have to start worrying about whether or not my searches look suspicious, it's just going to make me search out anonymizers, or another search engine....because you bet your ass my search strings look suspicious.

Researching Islam in one search, then researching America's power distribution infrastructure in another is going to pop up on someone's radar...but I've done that. They're not going to take into consideration that I'm an atheist and have absolutely no interest in destroying America aside from why and how a terrorist might do it. They'll just kick down my door and disappear my computers for a couple of years.

Re:bad idea

[NFN_NLN]

Correct. Unless there's a very strong correlation that one behavior overwhelmingly leads to another that is a crime, then using one's research to attempt to predict a crime will lead to nothing more than the police showing up to essentially ask you if you're going to commit a crime. Even if you were, you simply say, "I'm sorry officer, but I have no legal obligation to speak with you on this or any other matter."

This sounds like a bigger money sink-hole than "the war on drugs". If this ever became law I'll be sure to purposely draw suspicion several times a day. Eventually I'll be able to bleed the entire police budget on these trivial calls... and I hope everyone does the same.

Just think of the increase in parking fines, speeding tickets for going 1 over the limit, etc, etc, required to pay for this garbage. Nothing is free and if this is how you wish to allocate police resources then you are a complete failure.

Re:bad idea

[cpu6502]

Funny. :-) But predicting user habits online (which pages they will visit today, or their favorite candidate) is not the same as predicting the stock market..... which I suspect is completely chaotic. Remember that Asimov's psychohistory could predict *general* outcomes over decades, not day-to-day events.

Re:bad idea

[glebovitz]

Blind searches would be somewhat useless. Let's say the goal is not to lock people up, but prevent crimes from occurring. From discussions here, the analysis of searches would produce many more false positives then actual crimes. If the police had to investigate each and every false positives, they would not be available to work on committed crimes. This seems like a costly endeavor for limited benefits.

On the other hand, targeted searches would be useful, if police suspect a terrorist operative, then watching his/her searches for train or flight schedules or parts for making improvised explosive devices might help prevent a terror attack.

I suspect the latter is already in use.

Re:bad idea

[JoeRobe]

And remember, I'm not talking about arresting. I'm talking about investigation.

I agree with you there. I certainly think that going off and arresting a person based on a 25% or 75% or even 99% chance that they'll commit a crime is ridiculous. But if that search inspires the local police department to, say tail you for a day or two to make sure you don't commit the crime, I don't see what the harm is. They wouldn't even have to talk to you - just make sure you're not doing something illegal. I think an analogous situation would be if you walked around in public asking strangers how to suffocate someone - eventually one of those strangers would get suspicious and go to the police, and the police would (or should) investigate.

Of course all this is in the limit of infinitely large police forces and budgets, and assuming people don't take advantage of it (e.g. using your buddy's phone to search for ways to kill someone, just for kicks...).

Re:bad idea

[Immerman]

Heck, *I* have more than enough information to predict the future. Most of my predictions will be false, but that's to be expected.

Lets be clear - the universe is built upon a foundation of seething chaos - even if you knew *everything* knowable about the universe at this moment and throughout history, I'm talking full-on godlike omniscience sans seeing into the future, the best you can offer is a stochastic model of what will happen a moment from now. It would (probably, the odds could always go against you) be reasonably accurate for large-scale predictions of the behavior populations, but begin to break down quite badly for predicting the details - after all the options are virtually infinite, but any prediction assumes the "most likely" behaviors are occurring.

And if you're trying to predict more than a few moments in the future you start having to deal with the fact that not only are your probabilities spreading out, but you also have all those completely unpredictable outliers from the previous moments introducing new influences on the system, nudging it in directions that you couldn't have predicted.

Asimov loved writing stories about the impossible - much like the Three Laws, his psychohistory stories are all about the fact that even in a universe where it somehow manages to (mostly) work, it still breaks down horribly on a regular basis.

Re:bad idea

[Githaron]

You can send the police your searches then. I don't want them anywhere near mine.

Re:bad idea

[TheLink]

It's not completely chaotic- Google has the data. There are lots of google users that buy/sell in the stock market. And they do use Google to look up stuff. With the google ads "everywhere", Google knows what sites and pages they are reading, and can predict what they might buy or sell.

My guess is Google is choosing to not take advantage of the info they have in that way, otherwise those users might stop using Google.

Re:bad idea

[Githaron]

I would probably write an program to make searches off a list of things that will attract the police and then post it online for people to download and run. Police would run out of funds to deal with these blatant invasions of privacy rather quickly.

Re:bad idea

[Githaron]

Even if Google has the information needed to predict general outcomes, they don't necessarily have the processing power to make the necessary conclusions.

Re:bad idea

[Githaron]

The police should not even have access to your searches without a warrant.

Re:bad idea

[Opportunist]

You may think it's a great idea until the police knocks down your door just because some of your searches fit some kind of stupid hare brained profile. You better already know everything. Especially how whatever you might be searching for could possibly be related to some sort of crime, so you can avoid accidentally searching for something that triggers the minority report bomb.

Re:bad idea

[richard.york]

Google is not a person? Not according to the Supreme Court. Corporations have been using the 14th amendment to claim personhood since the late 1800's.

Re:bad idea

[Githaron]

Or he could be 100 million bad tacos away from mayhem.

Re:bad idea

[Githaron]

If curiosity is a felony and the police interrogate you because they are "curious" why you are curious, do they have to arrest themselves?

Re:bad idea

[nitehawk214]

Correct. Unless there's a very strong correlation that one behavior overwhelmingly leads to another that is a crime, then using one's research to attempt to predict a crime will lead to nothing more than the police showing up to essentially ask you if you're going to commit a crime. Even if you were, you simply say, "I'm sorry officer, but I have no legal obligation to speak with you on this or any other matter."

This sounds like a bigger money sink-hole than "the war on drugs". If this ever became law I'll be sure to purposely draw suspicion several times a day. Eventually I'll be able to bleed the entire police budget on these trivial calls... and I hope everyone does the same.

Just think of the increase in parking fines, speeding tickets for going 1 over the limit, etc, etc, required to pay for this garbage. Nothing is free and if this is how you wish to allocate police resources then you are a complete failure.

And then as they collect your info into nice neat reports, "Oops sorry that got leaked to the public."

Suddenly you no longer have a job.

Oh look this politician has looked at porn, suddenly he can no longer be elected. Oh look you went to an online dating site, please deposit $10,000 or the results will be sent to your wife.

There are a lot bigger issues that policemen wasting their time here.

Re:bad idea

[anyGould]

Call me a socialist, but I think saving people, and working as a community to help people through troubled times is more important than catching them after they have committed crimes

And you think the police banging down your door is the best way to help people through troubled times?

But there's even a better argument against - IP spoofing isn't exactly hard, folks. How long before someone hacks your wi-fi (or better yet, hacks an Important Person's wi-fi) and starts searching for "how to overthrow the government"?

Re:bad idea

[The Archon V2.0]

which is rather contraproductive:

The word is "counterproductive" and no it isn't.

- your searches will be read, this is the opposite of what you want to achieve

If he does nothing, the cops will get to read them anyway. This makes it not worth their while to do it. Protesters garner attention from the police all the time. Does that mean one should not protest?

- you may stop the police from catching real terrorists by making such a stupid thing

Not sure if trolling or diving face first into the Kool-Aid.

Re:bad idea

[iamhassi]

I think this is good.

A lot of people who would commit an impulse crime would think twice if they new the police were aware of their research.

Call me a socialist, but I think saving people, and working as a community to help people through troubled times is more important than catching them after they have committed crimes

You're AC, so you're trolling, but is slate.com trolling?

seriously there is no way anyone would actually think "Yeah, police should knock on my door whenever i search for illegal things"

What's next? Check out Catcher and the Rye and the police question you? John Lennon was killed by a man with the book, so something must be wrong if you want to read it, right?

And who thinks we have enough police to show up at someone's house every time they do an illegal search?

This story is so ridiculous that it's trolling. Sounds like 1984 with the thought police.

Re:bad idea

[lightknight]

"A lot of people who would commit an impulse crime would think twice if they new the police were aware of their research."

Fair enough. I'd wager a fair amount of money that having the police needlessly inspecting harmless queries would result in more crime. The hate people regularly feel, for any number of reasons, will become that much greater when Johnny Law is found leaning over their shoulders, not to help them with their life's trials, but to convict them in all but court over an innocent query. It'll hit its heights when the local dragnet, noticing a 'criminal' query, tries to step up its game, and catch the pre-suspect in the act by infiltrating and enticing someone to go through with the act ("Come on Bro, I left the rat poison in the garage, just like you wanted.").

Re:bad idea

[ArsenneLupin]

I saw that one coming... that's why I added "even if it was, it didn't intentionally help in planing the crime"...

Re:bad idea

[dgatwood]

But if that search inspires the local police department to, say tail you for a day or two to make sure you don't commit the crime, I don't see what the harm is.

Because statistically speaking, they would spend all of their time tailing people with search histories like mine, and wouldn't be available to respond to actual crimes or credible threats.

Re:bad idea

[Krater76]

Don't forget the Norwegian mass-murderer played World of Warcraft obsessively, so everyone who does this as well should be suspect.

Re:bad idea

[cayenne8]

Even if Google has the information needed to predict general outcomes, they don't necessarily have the processing power to make the necessary conclusions.

Yet...

Re:bad idea

[ifwm]

Google is not a person? Not according to the Supreme Court. Corporations have been using the 14th amendment to claim personhood since the late 1800's.

Except for 5th amendment cases, where the SC hasn't recognized that corporations are entitled to 5th amendment protection, which is what a "conspiracy" charge would have to deal with.

So, NO, Google is not a person, even according to the Supreme Court.

I'm glad I could totally destroy your ill-informed idea of the laws you pretend to understand.

Re:bad idea

[dhaines]

It'll hit its heights when the local dragnet, noticing a 'criminal' query, tries to step up its game, and catch the pre-suspect in the act by infiltrating and enticing someone to go through with the act...

Sounds sort of like what the FBI is doing now -- throwing fuel around until a "terrorist plot" flickers, fanning the spark with props and drama, then rushing in, press release in hand, to extinguish the evildoers' villainous plan.

Re:bad idea

[Godin21]

Uh, no. All that would happen is your taxes will be raised to cover the additional costs. If there is enough political support to back this kind of project, there will be enough money and power behind it to obfuscate the tax increases necessary to continue funding it.

You can't fight the government by wasting their money. They perfected that process long ago.

Someone somewhere will come up with a study showing how these kinds of crimes have not increased in frequency since they started monitoring for them, even though they can demonstrate an increase in relevant search traffic. See how much additional crime they're preventing!

Has the behavior of the TSA taught us nothing?

Re:bad idea

[jamstar7]

What gets me is, these two morons had to Google up murder methods. After all the violent tv and movies they've undoubtably watched growing up, after watching their friends get beat up on the playground, they have to Google methods of strangling somebody? I think I've been convinced there's something very wrong with the American education system...

Re:bad idea

[jamstar7]

Ah, but locking people up willy nilly will provide the manpower for companies working 'behind the wall' in prisons today. Especially since private corporations are getting into the private prison 'industry' and need to make the bottom line. By providing these private prisons with virtual slave labor working minimum wage and charging said labor for room, board, and security, while grabbing a decent fee from the State for each prisoner incarcerated and grabbing a kickback from any business wanting cheap labor, it's no wonder that the private prison 'industry' is booming.

Re:bad idea

[jamstar7]

Welcome to the USSA. Land of the fee, home of the slave. Papers, please.

Re:bad idea

[Hatta]

You don't get charged with "robbery" when you go to jail for smoking crack. You go to jail for "posesion of a controlled substance".

True, but there is no legitimate state interest in stopping crack smoking in and of itself. The (ostensible) legitimate state interest comes from preventing crime, or promoting the general welfare. Both of which involve only potential consequences of crack use.

Prohibiting X as a round about way of preventing potential consequence Y amounts to precrime legislation.

Re:bad idea

[shutdown -p now]

You may think it's a great idea until the police knocks down your door just because some of your searches fit some kind of stupid hare brained profile.

I don't really have a problem with police knocking down my door provided that all they want is a civil talk (which I can turn down if i want). What I would have a problem with, would be things like search or wiretap warrants based on keywords in my searches.

Re:bad idea

[tqk]

Considering part of my job is to plan terrorist scenarios for anti-terrorism training, I would prefer we not use this to find/surveil/arrest people.

Thankyou.

And if you're the one who's training the FBI to entrap dipshits with an attitude into FBI manufactured terror plots, would you please re-think that one?

Re:bad idea

[shutdown -p now]

I googled "police station bomb" to know the closest one to report to, and now someone's knocking at my @#$%@%# NO CARRIER

Re:bad idea

[NFN_NLN]

Uh, no. All that would happen is your taxes will be raised to cover the additional costs. If there is enough political support to back this kind of project, there will be enough money and power behind it to obfuscate the tax increases necessary to continue funding it.

You can't fight the government by wasting their money. They perfected that process long ago.

Has the behavior of the TSA taught us nothing?

In the short-term, you are correct. But eventually you cannot kick the debt can down the road any further. This reality is already hitting parts of Europe and parts of the US:
http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-most-bankrupt-cities-2010-12

Re:bad idea

[NFN_NLN]

And then as they collect your info into nice neat reports, "Oops sorry that got leaked to the public."

Suddenly you no longer have a job.

Oh look this politician has looked at porn, suddenly he can no longer be elected. Oh look you went to an online dating site, please deposit $10,000 or the results will be sent to your wife.

There are a lot bigger issues that policemen wasting their time here.

"One common misconception about Nazi Germany was that the police state was solely a creation of the authorities and that the citizens were merely victims. On the contrary, Gestapo files show that 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by “ordinary” Germans."

Good to see nothing changes. Scared pussies are pretty much the prime force of any police state. There are simply too many people doing too many things for a subset of people (police) to control everything. They rely on fear and sell-outs like you to maintain their control.

One day you're scared of getting caught doing something "unapproved" and the next day you're scared of what will happen if you don't turn in your neighbour for hiding Jews in the basement.

There are bigger issues than policemen wasting their time. The bigger issue is you wasting your life being a pussy.

Re:bad idea

[infolation]

Surely the XKCD reference should be google velociraptors

Re:bad idea

[0111 1110]

If the person really were planning a crime would you be expecting them to confess to some cop at their door that they really do plan to kill someone and that they are 100% serious about it? I know a lot of people are very stupid, but that's a suicidal level of stupidity.

Most people probably are stupid enough to talk to the police, but I think the ones who really were planning on doing something related to their suspicious sounding searches would just lie to the cop and eventually if the interrogation truly went OTT as I would expect it to (cops think everyone is guilty anyway) I think a large percentage of people would request that a lawyer be present for further questioning.

I wouldn't talk to a cop at my door under any circumstances. If he wants to develop a case against me he'd have to do it without my assistance. From time to time I might simply ask if I were under arrest.

Re:bad idea

[0111 1110]

What does critical thinking have to do with whether you do or do not want to live in a police state. That's a personal preference. I prefer not to live in a country where suspicious Google searches are illegal or even sufficient probably cause for an investigation. You may feel otherwise and regard a police state as a kind of utopia. No doubt pretty much all law enforcement people already feel that way. For them this kind of story is wank material.

Re:bad idea

[0111 1110]

Have you ever considered moving to North Korea? If this sort of thing became common practice don't you think people who really did want information about such things because they intended to commit some crime, some greater crime than the search itself, would use Tor or go to an internet cafe or use someone else's wireless router connection?

Re:bad idea

[TWX]

What's next? Check out Catcher and the Rye and the police question you? John Lennon was killed by a man with the book, so something must be wrong if you want to read it, right?

Yeah, but it's funny as hell...

Re:bad idea

[rtb61]

Of course playing games of 'can we successfully prosecute' whole risking the life of a victim is not the best thing either. How about if the Google search is used in conjunction with other behavioural patterns. For example how about if people where tested for narcissism and psychopathy. Narcissism being the genetic lack of an autonomic empathic response something that can be infallibly tested for and psychopathy being the genetic lack of an autonomic empathic response in conjunction with a extreme shallowness of emotional responses (psychopaths can not control their emotions they just straight up lack them aside from of course being able to simulate them in order to fool people and hide). As both conditions can infallibly be tested for and as psyhcopaths make up 1% of the human population but >15% of the prison population (even allowing for non-violent drug users, take them out of the equation and the percentage of psychopaths sky rockets). So when an identified psychopath initiates high risk to others activity perhaps alarm bells should go off, a quick investigation and check initiated not with the focus of prosecution but with preventative policing in mind.

Re:bad idea

[chrismcb]

, similar to psychohistory in Asimov's short stories.

Calling Asmov's Foundation series a short story is an under statment.

Re:bad idea

[chrismcb]

And remember, I'm not talking about arresting. I'm talking about investigation.

I don't care what you are talking about. What I research, read, think about, talk about, is NO one's business. And should not be any grounds for "suspicious" behavior. You know the whole freedom of expression thing.
Some people are going to say I can't talk about "fire" in a theatre, or talking about "killing the president." Does that mean I can't do research on it, or read about it, or think about it?

Re:bad idea

[chrismcb]

Call me a socialist, but I think saving people, and working as a community to help people through troubled times is more important than catching them after they have committed crimes

So you want to take away EVERYONE's privacy and personal freedom, just on the off chance you might be able to save a few people?

Re:bad idea

[cpu6502]

>>>>>similar to psychohistory in Asimov's short stories.
>>
>>Calling Asmov's Foundation series a short story is an under statment.

No it's an ACCURATE statement. They were originally short stories published in monthly magazines (1940s). Then in the mid-50s the short stories were collected together as an anthology. They still have the same short story or novelette form they had when the magazines published them.

Re:bad idea

[hesaigo999ca]

Apples and oranges, I think if you get some guy goggling how to create a pipe bomb and then does another search for the fbi buildings blueprints, and then looks up for a van rental company.....mmmmmm pretty damning if you ask me.

Re:bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

I also heard that possible future school shooters train obsessively on some terror training program called counter-strike

Re:bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

The authorities should certainly check out anyone who reads it more than once.

Re:bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

think of the children

Re:bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

I read a book many years ago that claimed that you could make money investing in the markets based on sunspot activity.

Re:bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

If the person really were planning a crime would you be expecting them to confess to some cop at their door that they really do plan to kill someone and that they are 100% serious about it? I know a lot of people are very stupid, but that's a suicidal level of stupidity.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/woman-complains-about-crack-dealer-765412

Re:bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

It damns him as a moron. You don't need a van for a pipe bomb.

Re:bad idea

[Riceballsan]

Sadly in our current laws we already allow the police this power to an extent. If you go to the home depot, get a hammer, nails, shovel, 8' of rope, and a roll of duct tape. The home depot could call the police and report you as suspicious, which does give them probable cause for a home search.

Re:bad idea

[Riceballsan]

Google the corporation might be a person, google the search engine, is not a person. If every product, or software made by the company were a "person", every crime would be a conspiracy... "He conspired with his black & Decker chainsaw" Microsoft could legally define itself as a person, Windows on the other hand is not a person. Google the corporation could be defined as a person, Googles search engine, mail, etc... aren't people, even using the batshit retarted laws.

Re:bad idea

[hesaigo999ca]

pipe bomb was for the example, but please feel free to add any sort of explosive of your
choice that can remotely detonated....that way you dont feel the need to attack a perfectly viable example

No, but...

[fragfoo]

They can always use Facebook as Post-Cogs.

Ban crime novels

[tepples]

crime drama [...] crime novel

Perhaps this could be used by some social conservative group as a way to ban crime novels by bending constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press without breaking them.

medical students

Can the Google account be linked to an accredited med school?

locking people up because they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent

It can be done without setting precedent in the case law sense. It might just involve enforcing traffic laws more strictly against someone because they MIGHT do something.

Re:Ban crime novels

[h4rr4r]

So only medical students should be able to learn about those topics?

What about if I just like to learn?

Re:Ban crime novels

[jd2112]

crime drama [...] crime novel

Perhaps this could be used by some social conservative group as a way to ban crime novels by bending constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press without breaking them.

medical students

Can the Google account be linked to an accredited med school?

locking people up because they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent

It can be done without setting precedent in the case law sense. It might just involve enforcing traffic laws more strictly against someone because they MIGHT do something.

You are chargers with attempted speeding. I don't care that you are on a bicycle and it's a 60 MPH zone.

Re:Ban crime novels

[geekoid]

What if most people who do multiple search items on a specific way to kill someone go on to commit those crimes?

Couple of reminders:
A) We aren't talking about arresting.
B) The internet is public.
C) Some crimes are methodically planned out over time. Rape, and most white collar crimes.

Of course, it comes down to numbers. I would love to see a study that looks at searches people made before committing a crime, and comparing the search, and how many times, to the generals populace search terms. It's it's really just noise, then we're done. But if it's a substantial correlation? That's a different discussion.

"So only medical students should be able to learn about those topics?"
Well, no. But some of the stuff I have to deal with that has it's roots in a misunderstanding of medical research or basic physiology, and part of me wants to say yes.

Re:Ban crime novels

[Githaron]

A) We aren't talking about arresting.

But you are talking about an invasion of privacy and possibly public embarrassment.

B) The internet is public.

Not everything on the internet is public. I use online banking but I don't want people looking at my bank statements or transferring my money.

Re:Ban crime novels

[mcgrew]

Leniency is given to non-habitual offenders- ie. based on prior behavior, not potential. Please reconsider voicing an opinion on legal issues until you're a whole lot less ignorant.

I suggest you do the same. Without a Card to Play, Texas Grandma Sentenced to Life Without Parole for First-Time Drug Offense

The summury sums up why its a joke

[djsmiley]

So.... you google how much salt would kill someone, and how pepper makes you sneeze. Later that day your housemate sneezes and a pot of salt falls onto them killing them (Hey, it *could* happen).

This is as about related as killing someone by gas/chemicals as killing someone by strangulation is.

Re:The summury sums up why its a joke

[nschubach]

This is as about related as killing someone by gas/chemicals as killing someone by strangulation is.

What if your partner wanted to try choking as a sex act? What if you Googled it to find out how dangerous and/or if there are implications to it. What if you typed "choking someone death" in Google to try to find out more about choking deaths? What if they did pass while in the act and it was truly an accident or there was something you didn't know about them (there could be countless things that could go wrong. Maybe you missed one.

Maybe you are housecleaning and you want to find out if some chemicals interact and may cause death.

Re:The summury sums up why its a joke

[geekoid]

Then you should get therapy.
That aside...

You should do then what you should be doing down. Keep a diary, be sure to have explicit safe signals, always do it sparingly to help minimize more extreme long term damage..

Seriously about seeking help. Getting pleasures from these acts always is rooted in deeper troubles.

Re:The summury sums up why its a joke

[spire3661]

Erotic asphyxia is not 'weird', only dangerous. Its not any weirder then bare hand rock climbing, or entering the death zone on Mt Everest. Its a thrill seeking activity. For the record, I have never engaged in it, but i get the 'erotic' psychology of it

Re:The summury sums up why its a joke

[multicoregeneral]

Oh the things and people I've googled over the years...

Internet Answers

[batquux]

Imagine some of the answers they found to those questions on Yahoo. I can't believe they pulled it off after asking the Internet.

Re:Internet Answers

[glwtta]

Imagine some of the answers they found to those questions on Yahoo. I can't believe they pulled it off after asking the Internet.

Considering they're both under arrest, and the police have records of texts and Facebook conversations about disposing of the body, among other ridiculously incriminating evidence, I'm not sure "pulled it off" is exactly right.

Actually, sounds about right for asking Yahoo how to get away with murder. Though knowing Yahoo, the first 20 replies were "You shouldn't murder people, murdering is wrong."

Re:Internet Answers

[batquux]

By "pulling it off" I meant, "actually managed to kill someone." Probably not the best phrase, but I didn't get as far as even considering them getting away with it.

Re:Internet Answers

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

How does corpsy formed? How does corpsy formed/get viktim murdrd?

Best Answer - Chosen by /.

They need to do way instain body.

No.

[Sarten-X]

No.

Cops could (in theory, with the right legal framework in place, and the right IT support, and funding, etc.) use Google's data and analysis as strong indicators of suspicion. That could be useful, but it's not nearly enough to warrant an in-person police response.

An analogy would be for me to run up to a random cop on the street and ask him how long it'd take to get reinforcements to the area. It's not the kind of activity that normally happens, so I've probably earned a bit of surveillance and a few funny looks, but it's no reason to be arrested on the spot.

Re:No.

[jeffmeden]

An analogy would be for me to run up to a random cop on the street and ask him how long it'd take to get reinforcements to the area. It's not the kind of activity that normally happens, so I've probably earned a bit of surveillance and a few funny looks, but it's no reason to be arrested on the spot.

The most important difference is that said cop probably would not (unless he was especially unwitting) give you actionable intelligence as a result of your inquiry. The problem scenario that happens on Google is that you actually find what you're looking for. I could see this as just another way to weed out "dumb criminals" (like anyone who robs a bank without a ski mask on) since the more perceptive criminals will just find other ways to go about gathering their nefarious intel, like looking for news stories on dead people to see how they died, without using any keywords that signal you might be looking specifically for how to kill someone.

Re:No.

[MitchDev]

And now that I think about it, that's also a good way to distract the cop while your accomplices commit some other crime...he's busy watching you instead...

Re:No.

[nedlohs]

I'm pretty sure "annoying a cop" or "looking at a cop funny" or "speaking to a cop when not spoken to" are all reasons to be arrested on the spot.

More seriously if they tried analysing such data and responding in person they'd be overwhelmed with all the false positives (that have been mentioned in other posts, people researching novels, etc) that they'd have to give up on the idea anyway.

Re:No.

[Sarten-X]

"Let's find out," the officer cheerfully replies, as he picks up the radio and calls the dispatcher. "Can I get some assistance at the corner of 3rd and main? There's some wacko here who says he comes from the Internet on a quest for knowledge and troll skins. Could be a mental patient."

Re:No.

[CanHasDIY]

"Let's find out," the officer cheerfully replies, as he picks up the radio and calls the dispatcher. "Can I get some assistance at the corner of 3rd and main? There's some wacko here who says he comes from the Internet on a quest for knowledge and troll skins. Could be a mental patient."

Sounds like a good way to get tazered to death...

New method of suicide-by-cop?

Re:No.

[RulerOf]

run up to a random cop on the street and ask him how long it'd take to get reinforcements to the area.

I hope to God that I remember this idea the next time I win a bet with a friend.

Re:No.

[ArhcAngel]

The problem scenario that happens on Google is that you actually find what you're looking for.

You must have a different internet than me.

They may find answers but there is no guarantee the answers are correct.
It's kinda like asking /. the best way to pick up chicks.

It also would not surprise me at all to discover law enforcement had set up honey pots of illicit information for the express purpose of logging IP addresses of anyone perusing said pot.
They just have Google elevate their page-rank score for certain keywords and sit and wait.

Re:No.

[ArsenneLupin]

The most important difference is that said cop probably would not (unless he was especially unwitting) give you actionable intelligence as a result of your inquiry.

Could be on a tour of the police facilities, and some of the visitors asking the question. And the policeman who plays guide just wanting to be pleasant to his group...

Some dodgy questions also come up when visiting nuclear power stations, and in general the guide doesn't make a fuss over it. A terrorist is not going to participate in a tour to find out what size of plane he needs to smash the containment of the reactor building, there are more discrete ways to find out. But a lot of concerned citizens might ask that kind of question.

Re:No.

[geekoid]

I agree with you about the arrest. Perhaps a visit from a person from social services?

Re:No.

[geekoid]

That just means your internet skills are weak.

Re:No.

[geekoid]

I've done all those, and still do. Not arrested. Hell, I've hardly even been beaten~

joke, I've never been beaten. My dad was once, but frankly he had it coming. That was the 70's. when driving drunk and when getting pulled over you take a few swing at the cops got you munched in the stomach, hand cuffed and then driven home.

As a side note, he didn't do it again.

Frankly, it's preferable then the 'now we ruin you're life for ever' mentality. Thanks MADD!

Re:No.

[Sarten-X]

A friend of mine (whom we shall call "Art", for he is now an art teacher) was once involved in a city-wide scavenger hunt, where one item to find was "a police officer's badge number". Art and his team found a patrol car stopped in front of them at an intersection. Doing what all (un)reasonable young adults do in their young adult years, they chose the most straightforward method to get the officer's attention: they rammed his car.

More or less... They pulled up behind the car, then inched forward while the cop gave them quizzical looks in his mirror. Moving as slowly as he could manage, Art bumped the officer's vehicle. The officer got out, asked what was going on, understood the situation, laughed about it, gave them his business card (in lieu of his badge number, which is apparently against city policy to give out), and let them off with a warning to avoid hitting patrol cars in the future.

Despite Slashdot's popular opinion, most police officers are decent people. Treat them as such, with respect for the fact that they're trying to do their job, and they'll usually treat you decently as well.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you be tazered to death? Would someone google that for me please?

Re:No.

[DriedClexler]

There was a story reported on slashdot a while back, aptly titled "Police data-mining done right": they gathered copious data, and found where the crime spikes were (check cashing places on common paydays).

But what makes this different from "departments of precrime" is that the police don't actually arrest anyone in advance, but rather, show up ready at the places where they predicted crime to happen, and then wait for the illegal act to be imminent or in progress.

That, my friends, is how the police can use the data *correctly*.

Furthermore, it's not a case of some cop using his "gut feel" (or prejudice) that "all them criminals're gonna be at check2cash at the end of the month", but rather, using real data to back it up, showing that the police attention was deployed in an objective manner.

Re:No.

[sootman]

> Despite Slashdot's popular opinion, most police officers are decent
> people. Treat them as such, with respect for the fact that they're
> trying to do their job, and they'll usually treat you decently as well.

Until you become a suspect, then you're totally fucked. Or if you challenge their authority. Or, basically, if you want to do anything they don't want you to do. Like "I finished giving my 30-second statement about the accident I barely witnessed an hour ago, can I leave now?"

Re:No.

[multicoregeneral]

Despite Slashdot's popular opinion, most police officers are decent people.

That's true. But they did say the same thing about Nazi storm troopers. Despite popular opinion, mostly good people.

Re:No.

[nedlohs]

Did Art have white skin by any chance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFB_cEuBazs&t=5m10s

There are so many crimes

[tepples]

Allow me to fix that: "If they're a human, grab 'em now before they rob you. Call me speciesist if you want, but it might just save your family's life." There are so many crimes and torts nowadays that it's difficult to live without committing one.

Re:There are so many crimes

[alphatel]

All the more reason why we need to be protected. Freedom and Security are the same. I believe Google's tight integration with the Universe of Vast Knowledge should provide real-time updates on who is searching for anything related to crimes, or acts of unsociable conduct, and we should be investigating dangerous people all the time. Especially those who thought of doing something bad. Hopefully we will smother them all with their ungood think and trying to hide from the video feed we installed in their internet TVs.

Re:There are so many crimes

[Taty'sEyes]

ftfy: "If they're a human that does not vote for you, grab 'em now before they rob you. Call me speciesist if you want, but it might just save your family's life." There are so many crimes and torts nowadays that it's difficult to live without committing one.

then open wifi = easy frame up

[Joe_Dragon]

then open wifi = easy frame up

Re:then open wifi = easy frame up

[tepples]

I think that's the point: to get people and businesses that run open Wi-Fi to use WPA2 instead.

Re:then open wifi = easy frame up

[reub2000]

then open wifi = easy defense

FTFY

Don't worry!

[jeffmeden]

I bet you're already thinking of just a few reasons why this might not such a good idea.

If you are, don't worry, the police are on their way to rectify the situation. We can't have people pre-thinking that thoughtcrimes of the future are bad...

The Future Is Now

[jimmerz28]

People who use "encryption", care about "security" and things like "transparency" are already under suspicion of committing terrorist acts.

If you have a brain you're suspicious.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9618-newly-released-fbi-domestic-terrorism-training

Re:The Future Is Now

[RulerOf]

After the first line of your post, I'm rather dismayed that the link you provided didn't start, "https://" ... :(

Re:The Future Is Now

[cffrost]

After the first line of your post, I'm rather dismayed that the link you provided didn't start, "https://" ... :(

If you like using HTTPS, here are two plugins to ensure you're using it where it's supported:

HTTPS Everywhere
Enforces HTTPS use on supported websites using rule list.

HTTPS Finder
Detects HTTPS support on newly visited sites and creates new rules for HTTPS Everywhere.

Re:The Future Is Now

[jimmerz28]

That's because it was a honeypot.

Re:The Future Is Now

[RulerOf]

I didn't know until checking just after that post that HTTPS Everywhere is out for Chrome! Woot.

That other extension looks pretty cool, though. I'll see if it works well!

New use for Facebook

[arcite]

Cross-reference Facebook profiles with AI algorithm to identify psychotic tendencies. Anyone deemed psychotic is tagged to an automated watch service that silently records their activities. Once a predetermined set of data points is reached, intervention and forced treatment commences during pre-crime stage. Those who fail repeated treatment regimes are transported to remote tropical island from which there is NO ESCAPE. There, with little more than the rags on their backs and stone tools, tasked to rebuild a new society of their choosing. Once again, sci-fi B movies lead the way.

Re:New use for Facebook

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Anyone deemed psychotic is tagged to an automated watch service that silently records their activities. Once a predetermined set of data points is reached, intervention and forced treatment commences during pre-crime stage.

So you're waiting for them to write six lines with their own hand?

Re:New use for Facebook

[Reziac]

For those who don't get the reference:

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
-- attrib. Cardinal Richelieu (1585 -1642)

In modern parlance, "Anything you say can and will be used against you."

What happens if

[Compaqt]

you google "people who google 'chemicals to passout a person'"?

Re:What happens if

[Zero__Kelvin]

People who Googled this also liked:

The Trial and Death of Socrates
Deathcab for Cutie
Microsoft Windows 8

Re:What happens if

[GrumpySteen]

You get a lot of links to news stories about the two dumbasses who killed the cute blond chick.

google databases can be subpoened

[peter303]

This means they are protected BEFORE there isa suspicion of a crime. But good luck protecting your privacy after. I presume this extends to other portals like Yahoo and Facebook.

99.999% false positives?

[rolfwind]

Let's be real, once implemented, only retards would use google without tor or whatever to do searches. And there'd still be a ton of false positives from people searching interesting things out of idle curiosity, research, verifying what they saw on TV, writing a book, etc.

Re:99.999% false positives?

[Samantha Wright]

And immediately, it would become popular knowledge that it's dangerous, and everyone would use Bing or some other search engine when they wanted to look up anything remotely suspicious.

Re:99.999% false positives?

[DynamoJoe]

Even a false positive might only be false after the fact. In this case, I think if the cops showed up asking about the curious searches that they a) wouldn't have gone through with it and b) might have been busted for possesion even if they still would have.

The female doesn't seem to have been arrested yet but the boyfriend has. I'm expecting a breakup.

Re:99.999% false positives?

[ArsenneLupin]

Let's be real, once implemented, only retards would use google without tor or whatever to do searches.

or just use bing instead...

Re:Just the other day

[Talderas]

Showing results for How to Rap
Search instead for How to Rape

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Fishbulb]

Who decides what is 'suspicious'?

The really insidious part is this:

[...] help the police apprehend criminals based on foreknowledge [...]

If they haven't committed a crime yet, they're not yet a criminal. Period.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[glwtta]

If they're actually making preparations to murder someone, they have committed a crime and are criminals.

I don't have a problem with that. Of course, the burden of proof would have to be a lot higher than "googled some things".

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[AHuxley]

They have a list of terms, just like the NSA had back in the day.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hundreds-words-avoid-using-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Monchanger]

Well put. The presumption of innocence requires that a crime be committed. We'd need to devise a different legal system before this question becomes important.

That is, unless this exact sort of idiocy is what leads people to want to modify the legal system. We've done dumber things before.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[CanHasDIY]

If they're actually making preparations to murder someone, they have committed a crime and are criminals.

And how, precisely, are they to know that the person is "making preparations to murder someone?"

Just because I own rope, duct tape, a duffle bag, and several big-ass hunting knives, which occasionally get stored together, by no means indicates I have any intention to harm another person.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[geekoid]

tricky question, it usually depend on other things. For example, recording discussions, complaints from someone you're stalking, and so on.

"Just because I own rope, duct tape, a duffle bag, and several big-ass hunting knives, which occasionally get stored together, by no means indicates I have any intention to harm another person."
correct. However when they have been gathered together after you have threatened to kill someone, now they are suspicious. Sure, you might be preparing to go into the wilderness to blow off some steam. OTOH, it's still suspicious.

Just because I have plastic laid down, medicals knives laid out and a women tied down to a examining tables doesn't MEAN I was going to do her harm. OTOH, if someone saw that through a window, it would be worth reporting investigating.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"If they haven't committed a crime yet, they're not yet a criminal. Period."

I agree with what you said, but not with what you meant. Every US citizen is a criminal. Show me a US citizen who says they have never committed a crime in the US, and I'll show you a liar and/or a moron.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[CanHasDIY]

tricky question, it usually depend on other things. For example, recording discussions, complaints from someone you're stalking, and so on.

"Just because I own rope, duct tape, a duffle bag, and several big-ass hunting knives, which occasionally get stored together, by no means indicates I have any intention to harm another person." correct. However when they have been gathered together after you have threatened to kill someone, now they are suspicious. Sure, you might be preparing to go into the wilderness to blow off some steam. OTOH, it's still suspicious.

Just because I have plastic laid down, medicals knives laid out and a women tied down to a examining tables doesn't MEAN I was going to do her harm. OTOH, if someone saw that through a window, it would be worth reporting investigating.

The difference between your example and mine is that in yours, you've already committed a crime by holding someone against their will.

Now, if she let you tie her down willingly...

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[spire3661]

If they havent been convicted in a court of law, they are not yet a criminal, they are the accused.

Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Reziac]

Two contrary examples:

Mystery writers "make preparations to murder someone" all the time. On paper, in books that are widely published. Some even act out the circumstances to determine if it's sufficiently plausible before committing it to paper.

Distressed teenagers often conduct fantasies of murder or mass destruction, as a way of venting. At the time they may even "intend" to do it, but of course the overwhelming majority never do so.

How do you distinguish between such fantasy "murders" and in the real thing? The fact is, you can't.

We know where this goes.

[Tyr07]

Google searchs:
  - How to legally protest X president
  - How to legally protest corporate development
  - permit to protest in x county
(sometime later)
"Damn, my chain saw won't start, need to cut that would out back.."

- How to fix chainsaw that won't start
(Police)
OMTFWTFG!!!! Terrorist! Get him!

Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for this

[kheldan]

When Minority Report first came out in theatres, I was intrigued and went to see it. It's the only movie I've ever walked out on. Why? Because the very idea of being arrested and convicted of a crime you haven't yet convicted pissed me off to the point where I couldn't stand to watch another minute, so I left. Some years later I made myself watch the whole movie on TV but you get the point. This is the Slippery Slope that makes all previous slippery slopes look like absolute Amateur Night. Police, prosecutors, and judges are all just human beings, and we've all seen examples of all the above engaging in prejudicial or just plain careless behaviour, arresting and convicting people based on their own personal bias or worse. The last thing we need is phantom data on "potential" crimes that haven't yet been committed being used as a reason to arrest someone. This isn't even considering how such a thing would be used for political purposes; no one would be safe from arrest ever again.

Nothing changes

[sverdlichenko]

False positives' possibility is still ignored. Let's just grab everyone and think about children.

Re:Nothing changes

[sverdlichenko]

Somebody MUST think about children!

I don't think it's right to arrest them

[Larry_Dillon]

I don't think it's right to arrest them, but (assuming you had legal access to the search info) it sounds like a good reason to go to a judge and get a warrant to put surveillance on the suspect.

Re:I don't think it's right to arrest them

[chrismcb]

How do you get legal access to the search info? Are you saying the police should have access to all the search records to see who to go after? I don't agree that your searches should be a good enough reason to go to a judge to get a warrant.

Want to undercut the people?

[bjdevil66]

You make people afraid to learn.

There are so many problems with that kind of law enforcement that just thinking about how to list them out here makes me tired...

Re:Want to undercut the people?

[geekoid]

So you really can't list many logical retorts, so you make up an excuse that you are 'tired'.

Keep them busy?

[paenguin]

With the right searches, a determined public could keep the authorities so busy that they would eventually abandon the system.

Re:Keep them busy?

[cellocgw]

With the right searches, a determined public could keep the authorities so busy that they would eventually abandon the system
It would be nice to think so, but go take a look at the size of the data collection/processing center(s) the NSA has built up. There's no problem that can't be solved with a larger cluster.... or maybe that's clusterfuck.

NO

[HexaByte]

No. Our constitution doesn't allow you to be arrested for thinking about committing a crime, only for committing one.

How about we go back to swift and sure punishment that's so severe that most sane people wont do the crime? Instead, we have too many in jail for minor offenses, while the well connected can steal billions or kill people and not even get indited or get off on technicalities.

Let's fix the criminal justice system we have, not create one in which we make up more crimes that haven't happened.

Re:NO

[teslar]

No. Our constitution doesn't allow you to be arrested for thinking about committing a crime, only for committing one.

You'd be surprised

Re:NO

[trout007]

I think it would help more to go to a criminal justice system where there is only a crime if there is a victim. Then instead of punishment for its own sake the guilty party has to restore the victim. If they are incapable they would become the property ie slave, of the victim. This is allowed by the 13th amendment.

Re:NO

[cdrguru]

There is no such thing as swift and sure punishment today. If you kill someone there is about a 20% chance of being caught, tried and convicted if you are reasonably smart about it. Fortunately for those that develop a taste for it the odds are distinctly not in favor of repeat offenders - sooner or later your number will be up.

But what this does mean is that for the average guy on the street killing someone does not result in anything swift and sure. We have plenty of crime shows on TV showing how "crime doesn't pay" and showing every criminal act being prosecuted and in almost all cases being convicted, but that isn't reality. The reality shown in TV news and newspapers is that plenty of murders aren't solved and nobody is ever caught. Even the ones that are caught there can be problems with the case where it is never prosecuted. And then there are trial problems where it isn't at all clear in many cases. End result is about 20% conviction rate in the end.

Of course there are the folks that cave in to the police and just confess. And there are the folks that just can't manage to not tell their friends. I'm not considering these because nobody thinks of these possibilities ahead of time. The only real question is if you kill someone what are the real chances of ending up in prison or on death row. Today, the answer is a rather appalling 20%.

This isn't even considering the folks that are on the street today that would consider a stable bed and being fed regularly a vast improvement over their life situation - so prison doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

I believe most of the problem with the current conviction rate has to do with the size of the population rather than the procedures involved. If we had 10 million people in the US instead of 330 million there would be a far greater certainity about being convicted of a crime - just like there was in the 1800s when there were actually only 10 million people in most of the US.

Re:NO

[nitehawk214]

I think it would help more to go to a criminal justice system where there is only a crime if there is a victim. Then instead of punishment for its own sake the guilty party has to restore the victim. If they are incapable they would become the property ie slave, of the victim. This is allowed by the 13th amendment.

What. The. Fuck.

Re:NO

[HexaByte]

Uh, no.

The US had 9.2 times the population of Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population/ and 2.88 times the number of weapons per capita. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country/.

While we do have a higher firearms homicide rate than Canada, we are actually 18th in the world, not first as is generally perceived (not that you said that, it's just a general perception.)

Still, the article is about a strangulation death, so firearms don't play into this at all, do they?

Re:NO

[Nehmo]

No. Our constitution doesn't allow you to be arrested for thinking about committing a crime, only for committing one.

...

I'm not sure that's in the constitution. What part of the constitution are you referring to, the due process part? Anyway, the government can certainly take your kids into custody (which is de facto arrest) because, in the government's opinion, they are "at risk" of neglect or abuse.

Re:NO

[Reziac]

Having just spent a whole day watching a criminal courtroom -- you are right. Our courts are "clogged" because they're full of trivial offenses, mostly plea-bargained down from a "we're gonna screw you to the wall" accusation to ensure a conviction.

An example from yesterday's court: Some kid (probably 20YO and with a 20YO's lack of sense) had evidently followed a girl into a public restroom in search of a kiss, the sort of thing tipsy teens will do at a frat party. Nothing too serious. In a sane world, the cops say "Hey now, move along!" and that's the end of it. In our crazy world. this kid is convicted of "loitering" (a sure conviction, in lieu of the threatened charge of sexual assault) and now has a priorable offense under California's loony "three strikes" law.

BUT... I also worked out what the fines and penalties come to, and on average it's about $200 per minute of court time, PLUS a whole bunch of free labor from community service requirements (much of which is contracted out to businesses too cheap to hire real employees -- I personally know of two that do so), PLUS a bunch of fairly expensive "programs" that various offenders are required to sign up for. (Frex, DUIs have to attend four or five different ones.) All this at no risk to the court, being almost entirely trivial offenses. In short, the system has evolved into a profit center.

On top of this, LEOs often lie under oath or fabricate evidence (I have some firsthand knowledge of this) and since this will always help the prosecutor's conviction record, it's winked at. Frankly they should not be allowed to do anything we citizens cannot do; anything else creates a second class citizenry (the rest of us).

So, yeah, the whole thing needs to be fixed, and foremost the plea-bargain system needs to go, since it is mainly used to gain a conviction despite shaky or nonexistent evidence.... which I'd say is already tipping over into the realm of "crimes which haven't happened".

Re:Help

[justthinkit]

Shorter lines are more readable.

Curiosity as a crime

[nurb432]

Great way to kill off any chance of a future for our country.

Re:Curiosity as a crime

[KingBenny]

there's startpage, and duckduckgo and some other nice vpn-tunnely things that should make it kinda not possible for anyone who hasnt infected your computer to see what you were looking for but i read the germans have been doing that for long (all in the name of public safety ofcourse, so i wouldnt be surprised at all if the us and uk do that as well, what wasnt clear there is if their official government screenshot-malware was used for windows only or if they had the stuff to infect an -uxbox as well

Author never read Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled"

[cbelt3]

A quite logical extension of such thinking. When it comes to liberty of thought, the road to Orwell's 1984 is paved with 'good ideas' gone wrong.

In the late 1970's I purchased a copy (paper) of "the Anarchist's Handbook". Why ? I was doing research for a story I was writing for a Creative Writing class in college. I already *knew* how to make explosives.. I was an Engineering student !

Criminalizing people for their knowledge would mean that pretty much every Engineer will end up in jail. Yeah... that will definitely not help a modern world.

Guardian angel

[stud9920]

What if you send a cop to scare the shit out of the potential criminal ?

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[betterunixthanunix]

It's not a popular notion, but it's unreasonable to expect privacy in public acts like searches conducted through a third party website (Google).

It is reasonable to demand privacy in your search history. I do not want my health insurance company to know that I was searching for information about a particular kind of disease. I do not want my bank to know that I was searching for information about bankruptcy proceedings. I do not want anyone to know about the sort of pornography that I search for.

To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private. Now, if walking into a video store and renting a video is something that we can do with an expectation of privacy, a web search is certainly something we should expect to be private.

Try trackmenot

[AHuxley]

http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/
Let it run in your fav browser and have it use a set of search engines creating a random cloud of false searches when your online.
You IP will have AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Bing looking for terms from the daily mainstream press.
Average frequency and other settings can be used to fill logs all day everyday ;)
When you do search try something like startpage.com

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[nurb432]

I'm not sure if you should consider doing business with a '3rd' party as a public act. That would have some serous ramifications for consumer privacy.

That said, if the contract with Google ( there is one..and you agree to to by use ) says they can hand over your searches at will, i agree there are no guarantee there.. However, the issue here is the police using this data to predict crime, not doing research for a current ( judge sponsored ) investigation for evidence.

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[WormholeFiend]

I do not want anyone to know about the sort of pornography that I search for

FREEZE! Drop the box of kleenex on the floor NOW!

Re:Help

[nschubach]

That's subjective. Sure, you can more easily scan to the next line, but if you let the text go all the way out to the edge of the screen you have to do less scanning. Several of his sentences would be one line on my screen requiring no scanning whatsoever.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[Greyfox]

No one's safe from arrest now. There are so many laws on the book that in the course of day-to-day life you must be violating some of then. And in this day and age of indefinite detention without judicial review, they can always just accuse you of something and say "Oops sorry!" after five or ten years of solitary confinement assuming anyone ever notices you went missing and bothers to do something about it. Nope, the civil rights you're afraid are eroding are long gone already.

For the time being, though, I suspect your searches will mostly be used against you to demonstrate intent after-the-fact. If it looks like an accident but you searched on those terms ahead of time, that would be the difference between murder 1 (And possible death penalty) and manslaughter and a slap on the wrist.

Short answer: no

[Nadaka]

Long answer: HELL NO!

What do you have to hide, anyway?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Here's he biggest reason it won't happen: Google stock will collapse as people flee to other search engines that don't report to police like something from 1984.

Re:What do you have to hide, anyway?

[johnny cashed]

That's what I'm thinking. The minute word gets out that google shares your search queries to law enforcement is the day that people find other ways to seek out the information they are looking for.

The couple that perpetrated this crime were idiots for manifold reasons. Nice that they left a electronic "paper" trail to aid the police and prosecutor.

Re:Dirty Honda

[ZeroSumHappiness]

This isn't google. You want to go to your address bar and type "google.com" into it then try again there.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[ZeroSumHappiness]

no one would be safe from arrest ever again

And that's exactly what they want.

A lot of scholarly journals are paywalled

[tepples]

So only medical students should be able to learn about those topics?

As it is right now, a lot of scholarly journals are paywalled. The only free access is through a subscribing institution.

What about if I just like to learn?

<devils-advocate>Then become a medical student.</devils-advocate>

Re:A lot of scholarly journals are paywalled

[h4rr4r]

You can learn a lot without reading scholarly journals.

I can't afford it, nor do I have the time to do it.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[stud9920]

have you ever heard of drama ? The entire point of drama is the resolution of a conflictual, uncomfortable situation. In Minority, the entire plot revolves about why pre-crime enforcement is a bad idea. And you walked away?

I guess I shouldn't talk about Earthbound(snes)

[Eightbitgnosis]

So yeah I killed Frank behind the arcade, and now I'm going to the police station. I know the cops gonna jump me, so I'm gonna have to beat them down with my bat....

(Suddenly sirens can be heard around my house)

Log in to search for this keyword

[tepples]

So... you actually log in to a Google account whenever you want to do a search?

About a week ago, Slashdot ran a story about Google warning its Chinese users that China tends to turn off access to Google for people who search for certain keywords. Likewise, Google could require that users who search for specific keywords or combinations thereof log in first if a country requires it.

Person of Interest...

[singhulariti]

....in real life then?

Re:Person of Interest...

[Lanforod]

My thought exactly. Build a machine like the one in person of interest with access to everything, but that no one has access to. Only looks for cases of predetermined violent crime, and informs the necessary authorities...

Bot

[Frankie70]

How about 'anonymous' or somebody building a network of distributed bots which do random suspicious searches every day of the year so the suspicious data is too much to sift through?

Re:Help

[Gr8Apes]

and if you're on something other than a desktop, those lines might wrap. HTML is designed to have the view rendered by the browser. Arbitrary forced line lengths destroys this ability. Are we geeks or not?

Re:Just use Bing

[nschubach]

But they will notice. If you use a larger search engine, your query is easier to drown out in all the other noise.

Minority Report actual movie

[AwesomeMcgee]

I think Oremus didn't watch all of Minority Report, my memory of it was a tale of why not to do pre-crime arresting..

Issue more tickets to the person of interest

[tepples]

First, you mean speech- novels are art, not news.

Novels are also printed on a printing press. Besides, since when is the distinction important? Both are commonly analyzed lumped into a media-agnostic concept of freedom of expression.

And where the hell did that nonsense about traffic court come from?

I didn't mean traffic court as much as traffic stops. It's not that a ticket issued to a "person of interest" would lead to harsher penalties as much as that a "person of interest" would get more tickets in the first place.

Leniency is given to non-habitual offenders- ie. based on prior behavior, not potential.

Please allow me to spell out the scenario more explicitly. First, some pre-cog data mining scheme produces a list of persons of interest. Then police officers step up traffic enforcement for vehicles matching license plate numbers registered to these persons of interest, possibly aided by OCR, and they more heavily patrol routes traveled by these drivers. This gives police more chances to stop a person of interest, and eventually, with enough tickets, the non-habitual offender becomes a habitual offender.

Re:Issue more tickets to the person of interest

[geekoid]

You're scenario is stupid.

pre-cog* data mining alerts of a highly probably hit. Law enforcement, or preferably a social service person, shows up to ask the person some questions.

The person says 'I'm' researching a book', or 'I was curious about something on CSI'
Social services person makes a note of that, probably a check box. Then asks the person if there is anything they need help with, and hands them a pamphlet with some phones numbers. Tells the person it's routine. Then leaves.

So if there was a problem, the person known there is a note and they will be investigated if search crime suddenly happens nearby.
Reducing the odds that they will commit the crime. Giving them an option for other help.

Why would you set of a traffic block aide? why would you look for a car when you know where they live?

*this all hinges on there being a reasonable correlation between certain searches and crimes. I suspect there isn't, but I would like to seem some actual numbers.

The minority report did what every dystopian future story does; exaggerate to absurdity to make a point.

Re:Issue more tickets to the person of interest

[1u3hr]

data mining alerts of a highly probably hit. Law enforcement, or preferably a social service person, shows up to ask the person some questions.

What a completely idiotic idea.

The moment that this happened:

1) Bored teenagers would start doing these searches.

2) Hackers would write Trojans to do them on targets' PCs.

3) Real killers would use an anonymising method to find whatever they wanted and not raise a flag.

Exactly the same kind of security theatre that most of the post 9/11 precautions are. Complete waste of time and money in achieving their stated aims and huge invasion of privacy for innocents caught in the net.

They are already doing that

[mapkinase]

Except instead of arresting right away and facing slightly longer legal battles, say arrange entrapment.

Re:Help

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL CAPS IS THE MOST READABLE TEXT, at least according to Microsoft.

Stupid caps filters.

Re:More importantly...

[CanHasDIY]

How in the hell do you say Okrzesik?

Fuh`-kt

Re:Dirty Honda

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you just shot Marvin in the face!

It's just a misunderstanding

[JTsyo]

"Officers, I had no intention of harming farm animals. The search on "choke the chicken" was for something else entirely."

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[TubeSteak]

To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private.

That's because someone walked into a record store and pulled up the rental history of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.
Many legislators have zero problem with privacy invading laws because they always assume it won't be used on them.
The second that changed, they shit their pants and passed a law that protected everyone within the year.

If you want real reform, we need the cops to start treating judges and legislators like they treat young black men in NY City.

Dump Google

[J'raxis]

1. Use IxQuick for search.
2. Use it through TOR.
3. Profit.

Research...

[lmcgeoch]

Just because you are searching on odd things does not make you want to commit them, maybe you are researching for a book.
You would want the book to be realistic as possible.

Maybe someone is acting supicious and you think you might be slowly poisoned or something like that. You would definately want to look up why and how someone is doing this.

There are many reasons to search information on the web and it is not always to harm/hurt or even idle curiosity.

With how entrenched Google is in life ...

[somarilnos]

...it's a scary thought to see how much could be done if they used this a pre-cog. Conceivably, if you searched for something on a 'banned list', they could report it to the police, track your location via your Android phone so that police can find you, or, maybe even have your car drive you to the nearest police station (with their fine self-driving vehicles). Or spot you via one of their Street View patrols, combined with facial recognition software. Never mind if you also emailed a friend about the potential crime from your Gmail account.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[kheldan]

*facepalm* You're going to focus on me walking out of a movie instead of the actual point of my comment? Seriously?

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[ArsenneLupin]

To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private.

And they only reason for this is because once upon a time, a video rental store leaked the rental history of some influential judge...

So, how much is a life worth, anyway?

[cdrguru]

The question that needs to be answered at a high level is indeed, how much is life worth?

In theory, it is not permissible for law enforcement to do anything until a criminal act is committed. This means that if you (and the police) know with absolute certanity that someone is to be killed nothing can be done until they are in fact killed. There are plenty of edge cases to this but at the most extreme if you see someone with a gun walking towards someone else saying "I'm going to kill you!" in reality nothing can be done until their target is in fact killed.

Now, basic humanity suggests that this isn't a good idea. So the extension of this is that if there is reasonable suspicion that someone intends to do harm to another - through knowledge that a third party has - shouldn't there be some responsibility to look into preventing this act? Somewhere between a phone call and a sharp tap on the shoulder with a message saying "We are watching you" would probably be enough to save a few lives.

Of course, locking someone up for life or at least a very long time because they intend to kill someone probably isn't the right answer. But then we get into the murky world of "psychological readustment" - do we put someone in the hands of state shrinks because they have a good chance of harming someone else?

Sure, there is some question of privacy here, but in reality is everyone's privacy worth more than some percentage of people killed being saved? It all comes down to the question of what is a life worth? In some countries clearly it is worth nothing - because everyone there agrees that the afterlife is much, much better and the sooner you get there the better. In most Western countries this doesn't hold for much and the folks that think this way are considered odd, maybe even dangerous. So for the most part in the West the entire question is sidestepped and ignored - everyone assumes life is very valuable. Except in some cases where we actively seek to cheapen it. Is this one of those cases where life just isn't that valuable?

Not what Minority Report was actually about

[mr.mctibbs]

It's obvious that the author here has never actually read The Minority Report. The moral question was "can we arrest someone for something we *know* they're going to do." The entire framework setup in that story to pose the question relied on a magical ability to see into the future, not merely suspicion. Using tech to find suspicious searches is something entirely different. A big *whoosh* for the genius who wrote this drivel.

Let me just say..

[1s44c]

There is something seriously wrong with these two killers and by extension something seriously wrong with the environment that created them.

These people strangled a 19 year old girl to death in her sleep. The victim thought these people were her friends.

Give these killers a fair trial and assuming they are found guilty lock them up for the rest of their lives. And spend some money researching just how people turn into these kind of monsters.

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[zill]

That's because someone walked into a record store and pulled up the rental history of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.

In case anyone else haven't heard the story before:

During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals, wrote about it for the Washington City Paper.[22] Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans only had such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.

mostly bad idea

[tverbeek]

There are all sorts of problems with this idea, of course. Oodles of them. But it isn't entirely without merit. The authorities cannot (at least under current legal doctrine) charge you with a crime you might commit in the future, and I don't think they ever should. But if you're figuring out how to kill someone, and the cops show up at your door saying "we think you're planning to kill someone and you'll be the first person we talk to if someone is killed", that's going to be a rather strong deterrent, and probably prevent that crime. The question is whether it can be done without irreparable harm to personal liberties... and I doubt that.

Re:mostly bad idea

[TWX]

That only works if there are very few false-positives.

Every time CSI or some other crime drama is on, there will be tens of thousands of searches. You could attempt to filter those out, but then you have someone with intent simply searching while watching CSI.

There is no good way without intensive investigation to determine if there even is a danger. Such investigation is only proving warranted in cases where terrorism is a real threat.

Re:mostly bad idea

[davester666]

Even if it saves no lives, it's worth the irreparable harm to personal liberties just because it will appear to have the possibility to save lives, and it will give Congress and the Senate something meaningless to fight about [vs all that hard stuff, like taxes, health care].

Re:mostly bad idea

[nephilimsd]

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that "conspiracy to commit a crime" is in fact a crime. If you could "prove" intention to commit murder through google searches about how to accomplish the task, I think this could be viewed as a crime in and of itself.

Re:mostly bad idea

[dgatwood]

Every time CSI or some other crime drama is on, there will be tens of thousands of searches. You could attempt to filter those out, but then you have someone with intent simply searching while watching CSI.

You can't avoid falsely throwing out real searches, but it is easy to avoid picking up that sort of false search. Statistically, there will be a number of people searching for he same subject at the same time (and usually again two or three hours later during the rebroadcast for Pacific time).

The hard part is ruling out people like me. In the past year, I've searched for information about creating various types of explosive devices (including reactivity of certain nasty metals), yield and critical mass numbers for nuclear weapons, LD50 and appearance of numerous types of poisons, the actual chemistry involved in making cyanide, various subjects in virology and bacteriology, etc. And I've searched for a lot of famous people by name, too.

If you looked purely at my search history, you'd think I was a complete lunatic ready to snap and kill millions of people or assassinate various famous people. Anyone who actually knows me would fall on the floor laughing at such a notion. On the other hand, most of the time, when an actual crazy person decides to kill someone for the first time, their friends would also laugh at the notion. The result is that there is no good way to filter out people like me without also ruling out most of the actual crazy people that this sort of thing would be intended to catch.

If you investigated more carefully (traffic sniffing), you would quickly discover that many of these searches involve fact checking for comments I later posted on Slashdot (or decided not to post, in some cases).

You would have a much harder time discovering the reasoning behind searches related to a series of books I'm writing (well, mostly editing at this point; I'm basically done with the writing). You would *eventually* understand, but not for many years after the search, by which time if I were actually trying to kill someone, my target would already be dead, buried, and the evidence disposed of.

But the maximum level of confusion would be caused by books and articles—when I read something and wonder, "Is that really possible?"

Worse, you can't even rule it out based on who made the search, saying, "Oh, it's just that writer," because creativity and insanity are closely related biologically. By doing so, you would likely eliminate all of the people you were actually trying to catch.

In short, as you implied, investigating all the legitimate concerns would be prohibitively costly. It would inarguably make us safer as a society, but it would be completely impractical to do so, requiring a level of human involvement (physically spying on the suspect) that will always be infeasible given the number of false positives.

Re:mostly bad idea

[cayenne8]

Every time CSI or some other crime drama is on, there will be tens of thousands of searches. You could attempt to filter those out, but then you have someone with intent simply searching while watching CSI.

Ah...so the smart person, wanting to google for crime info to use it...should do most all their controversial searches during CSI showings...to hide their searching in the 'noise' generated by these shows.

And considering CSI seems to be on about 5x times a day or something....

:)

Re:mostly bad idea

[DriedClexler]

Maybe we're splitting hairs now, but when they charge you with "conspiracy to commit murder", they're not "charging you with a crime you might commit in the future" (i.e., murder). They're punishing you for what you already did: take steps narrowly optimized for leading to someone's death, involving the cooperation of others intending to achieve this end.

Re:mostly bad idea

[ifwm]

the cops show up at your door saying "we think you're planning to kill someone and you'll be the first person we talk to if someone is killed",

That would be harassment, and actionable. Any evidence they had would be subject to scrutiny under the 4th, and since it was gathered without cause or warrant, would be thrown out.

But it isn't entirely without merit.

Yes it is.

Re:mostly bad idea

[Hatta]

The authorities cannot (at least under current legal doctrine) charge you with a crime you might commit in the future

Yes they can. The trick is to make the warning signs of crime an actual crime. e.g., in some places buying more than a certain amount of pseudoephedrine is a crime in itself, even without any indication that the individual wants to make methamphetamine.

And for that matter, the laws against methamphetamine are a kind of precrime in themselves. Simply possessing methamphetamine doesn't mean that you are going to take it, and taking methamphetamine doesn't mean that you are going to hurt anyone.

So the take home point is that precrime is here, and we've been dealing with it for decades. Not only that, but we're imprisoning people for pre-precrime, and even pre-pre-precrime. Every time you convert a precrime into a crime, you invent a new precrime which will need to be converted into a crime as well. This process never stops.

Re:mostly bad idea

[KhabaLox]

Every time CSI or some other crime drama is on, there will be tens of thousands of searches.

Anyone with half a brain knows that everything on CSI is impossible anyway.

Re:mostly bad idea

[dgatwood]

I agree that it would be an unacceptable loss of privacy as well. The reason I made the points I made rather than bringing privacy into the mix is that privacy vs. safety is a continuum, and the sweet spot on that continuum is a matter of opinion. Thus, an argument from that position would be unlikely to convince anyone who doesn't already think it's a bad idea. By contrast, if you can show that something would be completely ineffectual or infeasible in practice, such an argument is more likely to sway the opinion of even people who fall more towards the safety end of that continuum.

Re:mostly bad idea

[sootman]

Now that we're up to about a dozen varieties of CSI, that'll be a lot of curious viewers' doors that get knocked on.

Re:mostly bad idea

[sootman]

Rats, hit 'submit' before I included my cool link for yes-this-could-really-happen: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/technology/postcards-from-planet-google.html?pagewanted=3

... the most trivial events may also register on Google's sensitive cultural seismic meter. The logs team came to work one morning to find that ''carol brady maiden name'' had surged to the top of the charts. Curious, they mapped the searches by time of day and found that they were neatly grouped in five spikes: biggest, small, small, big and finally, after a long wait, another small blip. Each spike started at 48 minutes after the hour...

That night the million-dollar question on the game show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'' had been, ''What was Carol Brady's maiden name?'' Seconds after the show's host, Regis Philbin, posed the question, thousands flocked to Google to search for the answer (Tyler), producing four spikes as the show was broadcast successively in each time zone.

Re:mostly bad idea

[TWX]

But the act of possessing a certain amount of a substance or possessing a substance can itself being a criminal act. The consumption of a substance is also capable of being a criminal act. It's even possible to define, in advance, intent, such that things like, " possession with intent to distribute" can be crimes. They're not the same as distribution.

Re:mostly bad idea

[Hatta]

That was the entire point of my post. Precrime is implemented by making them actual (de jure) crimes. Which just creates a new set of precrimes, that authoritarians will want to convert into de jure crimes, and so on. Until everything is criminal.

This is why it's important that only things that do real harm to people are actually classified as crimes. No harm, no foul.

Re:mostly bad idea

[uninformedLuddite]

That just makes me feel sad

gen y fail

[j00r0m4nc3r]

after all that googling they just resorted to the good old fashioned "Strangle" maneuver...

These data are completely useless

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

As long as we do not know how they correlate to other "suspicious" searches or even to the sum of all queries at a given time the pure existance of these wuery terms does not tell us anything. Not even the slightest definition of "suspicious" query was given, so the whole theory is speculative.

Did you mean to search for ... anger management?

[probablyandy]

Cops aside, what if the search engine gave suggestions like local psychologists or anger management. Wasn't Facebook going to give ads for suicide hotlines if your posts seem depressed? Even if cops are not made aware of your searches, I wonder if there is some psychological impact of your search engine hinting that they have tracked your searches and know what you're planning.

Promote lifestyle changes?

[gtirloni]

I think it'd be more productive if the, oh-so-powerful, governments would create policies to stimulate people to focusing on being better human being in the face of adversity and frustration. It could be meditation or whatever, just stop chasing the tail on this.

Things for which cops usually give warnings

[tepples]

A charge of exceeding the posted speed limit on a bicycle would be easy to beat and get proverbial egg on the ticketing law enforcement officer's face. I'm talking about minor violations for which law enforcement officers are usually more likely to give warnings or not even stop at all: 3 MPH over the speed limit in a car at the bottom of a hill, 5 MPH over the speed limit on a highway where others are going 10 MPH over, performing a "rolling stop" (slowing to under 2 MPH instead of fully locking the brakes) at a stop sign or at a red light in preparation for a right turn on red, crossing a double yellow line to pass a cyclist who is slowing down for a red light, failure to use a turn signal, a taillight out, a nonconforming seat belt, running a red light that hasn't turned green for over six minutes because the vehicle detector is failing, etc. Having the license plate registered to someone who has ended up on a government watch list could cause police officers to be more likely to write a ticket.

Re:Things for which cops usually give warnings

[Migraineman]

JudgeBot: Citizen, you are charged with "intent to speed." How do you plead?

You: Uhm, you Honor, I plead "nuh uh." I was on a bicycle on an uphill incline where the posted limit is 65 mph. How could I possibly speed?

JudgeBot: Citizen, your statement provides no merit against the charge. TrafficCamera19203-Z is a sworn officer of the court, and his observation of your intention to speed is admissible as evidence to this court. [gavel BANG!] The court finds you guitly. Bailiff, please escort this Citizen to the Payment Processor.

Re:Things for which cops usually give warnings

[spire3661]

More like [gavel BANG!] 'Payment Processing has already deducted the funds from your account'

Re:Things for which cops usually give warnings

[chrismcb]

JudgeBot: Citizen, you are charged with "intent to speed." How do you plead?

I plead guilty to the intent, or at least desire to speed. But these poor legs just couldn't do it.

Re:Things for which cops usually give warnings

[uninformedLuddite]

Having the license plate registered to someone who has ended up on a government watch list could cause police officers to be more likely to write a ticket.

Actually I can vouch for this. I did something illegal 26 years ago and am pulled over every time a police car gets within range of me. Here in sunny South Australia the cop cars are fitted with scanners that scan all the cars around the cop car and automatically query a database about the possible driver of the car. This happen to me in a car that is registered in my wife's name (who has had no trouble with the law) which means the database contains data about possible drivers not just the owner of the vehicle. If you see this sort of stuff being proposed by lawmakers in your area then you have to fight it. And yes, they give me tickets for anything they can, search the car without warrants, attempts to start physical altercations, and all the other good stuff law enforcers can do to someone they are out to harass.

Doesn't apply.

[geekoid]

Well then, stick to your own private internet.

"To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private."
haha. Oh yeah,. the Reagan law he shoved out because a republican was shown to be a hypocrite.

Anyways, you might want to brush up:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2710

it wouldn't apply in the context of this discussion.

Yuo knwo what I love about minority report? in that judicial system, substantial fewer innocent people go to jail then in our current system.

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[Sloppy]

It is reasonable to demand privacy in your search history. I do not want my health insurance company to know that I was searching for information about a particular kind of disease.

I totally understand. It is very reasonable for you to not want them to know that.

What I'm wondering is: if you don't want someone else to know something, then why are you transmitting that information to a stranger? You even picked as your stranger, an inhuman machine (both literally (computer) and metaphorically (corporate)) who has no reponsibility to you, no empathy for you, and sense of discretion. And on top of that: YOU KNOW IN ADVANCE THAT THIS PARTICULAR BUSINESS IS TO PROFILE YOU! That's what Google does. That's what their search is for. That's why they offer it. And you knew that. This isn't even subtle, the way that some people haven't thought about what Facebook really is. It's Google, the goliath of advertising, and we're talking about this in 2012!

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me hate the technical legal jargon of "reasonable expectation of privacy" because it's so utterly contrary to the layman's usage of those words. It's unreasonable (reason is what tells you that you don't have privacy) and a person's expectation is that by disclosing the information to an out-of-control unbound party, the information will cease to be confidential.

The worse thing about it, is that when we pretend that such things are private, we undermine privacy. We make it so that policy is the only thing we have protecting us. And policy is almost the worst thing I can imagine to pull out of the toolbox, for handling this sort of thing.

Search anonymously. Encrypt things. Don't shout secrets. You have more power on your pocket-sized $300 computer than a hundred Congresses could ever give you.

already happens

[joseph90]

This already happens. What do you think happens to your search history? (and your facebook history, etc.)
Profiling of people based on their search history/browsing history/social network is used to identify terrorists. Of course you are not (yet) arrested as a result but you are watched very carefully and put on "lists".

Just because no-one has used this information against you does not mean it does not exist.
or am I wrong?

I have no sig

did you see the movie???

[Eponymous Hero]

have we all missed the point that pre-crime is a fallible, manipulatable sham?

Not going to risk it

[uigrad_2000]

Unless we have Bender as a pre-cog, in order to pre-cog the pre-cog's plan.

(Yes, I left out several levels of recursion. If you want the full story, then just watch the freakin' episode)

limit to "probable cause" and it might work

[RobertLTux]

and yes i know yet another way for the police to get a warrant may or may not be bad (but not as bad as the police not bothering to get a warrant).

Re:Help

[nschubach]

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5625/are-shorter-lines-easier-to-read

Several studies found that longer line lengths (80 – 100 cpl) were read faster than short line lengths (Duchnicky and Kolers, 1983; Dyson and Kipping, 1998). Contrary to these findings, other research suggests the use of shorter line lengths. Dyson and Haselgrove (2001) found that 55 characters per line were read faster than either 100 cpl or 25 cpl conditions. Similarly, a line length of 45-60 characters was recommended by Grabinger and Osman-Jouchoux (1996) based on user preferences. Bernard, Fernandez, Hull, and Chaparro (2003) found that adults preferred medium line length (76 cpl) and children preferred shorter line lengths (45 cpl) when compared to 132 characters per line.

In other words, Inconclusive and Subjective.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[geekoid]

"Because the very idea of being arrested and convicted of a crime you haven't yet convicted pissed me off to the point where I couldn't stand to watch another minute,"
why? can you logically lay out why?

SO walking into a bank with a mask, gun, and a note, but not talking to the tellers isn't suspicious?

"Slippery Slope"
Nice. I wonder if you have a reason that isn't fallacious.

  no one would be safe from arrest ever again."
which has nothing to do with this discussion. People want it to, but it doesn't.

Just to point out:
That if you could predict the future crime with 90% accuracy, then that judicial system would put fewer innocent people behind bars that our current judicial system.
And contrary to /,. group think, our system is pretty damn good.

Re:Just use Bing

[Green Salad]

If a tree falls in the woods and it was indexed only on Bing...

FTFY

[Zero__Kelvin]

If you have a brain at all you are sometimes suspicious. If you have an intelligent brain and insist on using it, you're suspect.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[geekoid]

Well they did a bad job, because with the exception of one overly contrived situation, it worked. It was far more difficult to plant evidence in that scenario then currently.

I think maybe he realized that and acted angrily because his emotion position was questioned by the movie.

Of course like all distopian films, it ended with the stupidest resolution: shut it all down.

Considering it's track record, and that the point of the movie is that if one knows his or her future, he or she can change it, perhaps they should send people to talk to the people whoa re going to commit these murders?

Oh, and I love distopian films.

Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy

[betterunixthanunix]

I'm wondering is: if you don't want someone else to know something, then why are you transmitting that information to a stranger?

For a lot of people, that is the only way to get information about a condition without having to make an appointment with a doctor. Not everyone has access to a medical library, nor does everyone know where or how to look for information in such a library.

We make it so that policy is the only thing we have protecting us

That is universally the case. Policy is the only thing that protects you from ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, etc.

Search anonymously. Encrypt things.

The government made a concerted effort to thwart the deployment of such technologies when it mattered most: before the Internet became popular. The government has continued to treat good encryption systems as things that are only relevant for armies, diplomats, and large corporations. If the government is not going to work with us to deploy privacy protecting technologies, then the government had better follow through with what it promised when it was fighting civilian crypto use: privacy protecting laws and policies.

The majority of people are too technically illiterate to install and configure Tor or PGP. This is not something that needs to be the case; within a generation, we could have people who actually knew how to use their computer in a way that protects their privacy, if we simply added Tor and PGP to public school "computer classes" (which already cover spreadsheets, wordprocessors, and ironically, Google usage). Yet instead of working to empower people in this way, the government is continuing to push for back doors and continuing to treat anyone who works to protect their privacy like a suspected criminal. So yes, it is reasonable to demand that privacy be implemented through the law, and that we (i.e. people who are technically skilled) use privacy protecting technologies on top of that and encourage others to do so.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[Sperbels]

It's the only movie I've ever walked out on. Why? Because the very idea of being arrested and convicted of a crime you haven't yet convicted pissed me off to the point where I couldn't stand to watch another minute, so I left.

Analysis: Citizen has excessive anger issues, and is distrustful of authority. Recommendation: Citizen should be administered Thorazine daily via dart shot from drone aircraft.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[cellocgw]

When Minority Report first came out in theatres, I was intrigued and went to see it. It's the only movie I've ever walked out on. Why? Because the very idea of being arrested and convicted of a crime you haven't yet convicted pissed me off to the point where I couldn't stand to watch another minute, so I left

SRSLY? Just what did you think the movie was about in the first place? But, just for the record, the original PKD story is rather different and far better. Same is true for Total Recall vs. We Can Remember it For You Wholesale.

not much of a question really

[nimbius]

we're just plugging a product name in place of a common procedure the government has decided is wholly acceptable. Anwar Al Awlaki exercised his freedom of speech in a way america didnt exactly like, and under the guise of nothing more than a precognitive assertion that he's obviously a killer, the united states tried, sentence, and convicted him to death based entirely on the actions of other people and the youtube videos of his sermons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7rUMrFv2us

Anwar is to islam as jerry fallwell is to Christianity. His sermons center around conservative religious practices and family values, peppered with the occasional irritating demand for war or call to crusade against some mainstream itinerary of the culture war. the difference however being when Robertson or Fallwell call for the death of an abortion clinic or gay bar and one of their insane followers actually goes and pulls it off, drones never neave the tarmac and raze the 13 million dollar california mansions these assholes own.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[Zero__Kelvin]

"no one would be safe from arrest ever again"

Your post falsely assumes that anyone is safe from it now.

They didn't use the searches

[hawguy]

They didn't even use the knowledge from their searches and ended up strangling her instead. A killer doesn't need to use Google to know that strangulation can kill a person, so it's not clear that such a system would even stop a significant number of crimes, but it is clear that a lot of wasted resources will be used in tracking down queries made by people with no ill intent. And possibly even ruining some innocent lives (Sorry sir, you searched for "common childhood poisons", we're going to put your children into foster care for a few months while we investigate")

Re:Help

[robot256]

4-digit UID, maybe beh IS writing on an 80-character display without line wrapping.

One more reason

[ThatsNotPudding]

to start deprecating the use of all things Google. Sillyness like this is why Duck Duck Go, et al are seeing an uptick in usage.

Though at the current decline and fall rate of our 'free country', it would not cause my jaw to drop if they all have been backdoored (wittingly or not) by the Security Organs of The State.

What I Googled Last Night

[neoshroom]

So reading this I realized I, myself, last night Googled for:

the weapon causes suffering should I be angry

Sounds vaguely threatening. You could read that as saying "If you get me angry I will cause you pain with a weapon." However, I was searching for a quote. If you type that into Google you actually get what I was searching for among the top links:

A peaceful Buddhist quote, in this link in a book of the Dalai Lama.

Both the weapon and my body Are the causes of my suffering. Since he gave rise to the weapon and I to the body, With whom should I be angry? - Bodhisattvacaryvatra, 43

Who is going to decide

[wganz]

what is flag? The hoplophobic libtards would have to hold up one leg up in the aire to keep from defecating down both if they saw the searches that I used to buy my latest AR15.

This whole idea is based on the failed notion that libtards that a totally safe society is possible.

Scary if they, Scary if they don't

[Gimbal]

I hope that someone will be able to frame that theory in a more rational light, perhaps not directly associating it with any grisly details of such a tragedy. I think that the theory is so possibly dangerous, on any angle, the discussion of it should brook no sensationalism.

watch the movie.

[sonoronos]

The Pre-Crime system operated under a fundamental assertion that any crime predicted by the pre-cogs was 100% - without a doubt - going to happen.

The Pre-Crime system didn't use an inference engine with an incomplete dataset to determine if crime was going to happen. It used grown-up crack babies to actually predict the future - a priori.

Without that fundamental assertion, you can't have a Pre-Crime system. You might have a "Potential Crime" system, but try flying that one in the courts.

gray area

[vpness]

I'm conflicted so if I've researched , 'build your own surface to air missiles,' and 'flight paths of commericial airlines' , I'd sure expect the CIA/FBI to put me on a watch list, and issue warrants for various wiretaps. And if I went into a pharmacy, and started asking the pharmacist about how much of a drug I needed to knock someone out cold, it wouldn't be crazy for the pharmacist to make a call to the police. The reality of being able to actually do the google-precog, and hand off to the authorities 'leads' however just scares the **** out of me for the reasons all the above posters have already stated (whose posts are more in line with proper /. group-thinking)

Great!

[cvtan]

Now that I've read a Slashdot article about "how to suffocate someone", I can hear the police sirens in the distance.

Search Data aids *Conviction* not *Prevention*.

[Lashat]

I for one believe that it should stay that way into the foreseeable future. Even if modern criminal behavior prediction methods/tools experience a quantum leap forward, they will still be too inadequate to apply to general public predictive prevention of criminal acts. Large amounts of money, study, and effort have been put into understanding and "preventing recidivism in convicted sex offenders" (search that string for many studies/links). While it is known that the probability is extremely high for re-offending, predicting who, what, when, where, why, and how is nearly impossible.

If prediction in that well-studied, narrowly focused field is still producing poor accuracy, attempting to focus on such a wide group as "Everyone" is a no-go.

Searching How to How to right now

[BlackSnake112]

Since that brings up every how to thing...

I expect the FBI, CIA, drones, black helicopters, KGB, PITA, the police (not the pop group), and all the other agencies to track my every move and show up at my door any second now.

On a more serious note, if google or any other search engine was to do this it is a huge slippery slope. I hope that google or whoever would be held accountable for any harm done. If they did report it and some crime was stopped, google (or whoever) would be reaping the rewards of that act. They should be held accountable for any harm as well. Hopefully this is not going to happen. If it does I could see 5th grade little Johnny having his home raided due to looking up how to make a guillotine. He wanted to make a 4 inch by 5 inch working model for his class project.

Already doing it for counter-terrorism?

[Kergan]

Don't the NSA and the DHS do this already when tracking terrorists?

Search-based criminal profiling

[Kevin Fishburne]

What would stop Google from adapting the same algorithms that determine which ads are shown to create a criminal profile of a user? If you're constantly searching for skillets and saute pans Google no doubt flags you a possible chef. Users could be flagged as any number of things, such as misogynist, sadist, interested in children, etc. There could be categories of flags such as "interest" (children), item (duct tape) and action (how to dispose of a body). Certain combinations of flags could paint a user as a potential offender with reasonable specificity, and they're location aware.

I don't see the police showing up at someone's house based on profiles alone, but when a kid disappears I do see Google feeding a short list of "suspects" to the department to give them a head start. While this doesn't sound like a bad idea on the surface and would be legal depending on Google's TOS, it would make for some uncomfortable husband-wife explanations after the knock on the door.

Re:Just the other day

[Fned]

Weird, something like half the first-page links are the same.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[0111 1110]

That's particularly common in police brutality cases. If you want to find a violent cop just see how many arrests he's made solely for things like "resisting arrest", "disorderly conduct", and even assault and battery against them for no apparent reason and with no apparent injuries to the cop. Combine contempt of cop charges with a severely injured (or dead) suspect and 9 times out of 10 it's the violent result of someone attempting to stand up for their rights perhaps by remaining silent or saying something that challenges their authority.

Next step : prevention

[pennac]

If they implement it and it succeed, someone will eventually collide the stats and come out with this brilliant idea : why not prevent the crime and censor this dangerous information in the first place ? Observation precedes prevention.

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[0111 1110]

That if you could predict the future crime with 90% accuracy, then that judicial system would put fewer innocent people behind bars that our current judicial system.

Huh?! Because the police would be too busy arresting guilty people that they wouldn't have time to arrest innocent people?

And contrary to /,. group think, our system is pretty damn good.

Spoken like someone whose closest contact with said legal system is from a TV show. Try asking a defense lawyer that question. Or asking a prosecutor whether he cares whether a suspect really is guilty. Having said that it's not so much that the system is broken (although it is), but that the system relies on honest people running it and intelligent, logical, skeptics for the jury. I recently confessed to a crime that I didn't do, but which was actually done to me instead because, according to my attorney giving a false confession would mean a 100% chance of no jail time, but fighting the charges would mean spending half my annual income on additional attorneys fees and only a 50% chance of no jail time. The person who actually committed the violent crime against me gets no punishment, and I now have a violent crime on my record instead of him.

Enema executions

[bryan1945]

Let's see if I can get the cops to search my apartment for enema apparatus. Maybe I could make a shrine to "The Golden Flusher."
Of course this is a bad idea. Looking up information is not illegal. End of story.

Nope, cops are too stupid

[WarSpiteX]

Proof: the guy who dismembered that Chinese dude in Montreal and sent the body parts to the political parties, he was shown in videos killing kittens. Users online, including redditors, identified him and warned police about him. They did sweet fuck all.

The only thing police would do with these kinds of privacy-snooping powers is to target people who are a threat to the status quo (for good or ill.)

Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t

[chrismcb]

When Minority Report first came out in theatres, I was intrigued and went to see it. It's the only movie I've ever walked out on. Why? Because the very idea of being arrested and convicted of a crime you haven't yet convicted pissed me off to the point where I couldn't stand to watch another minute, so I left.

You DO realize that is the point to a lot of science fiction... to make you think.

yea, cops usually have the training

[KingBenny]

to become pre-cogs, they're selected worldwide for their fine social skills and sense of nuance, being able to read someone is also an absolute prerequisite before you get a badge and a gun i suppose
so, if i search for my happy morning hatebreed song, i go like 'destroy everything' on my startpage i can be expecting a swat team on my roof in a few years then ?
sounds like a plan not a good one, but a plan ...

mystery writers

[neminem]

Hasn't anyone ever watched Castle? " There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers. I'm the kind that pays better."

They'd have a fun time trying to do their jobs, if any time they tried to google for information for their job*, they got feds at their door... (I hear that actually already happens occasionally, but it'd be pretty lame if it were happening -constantly-...)

* http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItsForABook