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Search For "Foolproof Suffocation" Missed In Casey Anthony Case
Hugh Pickens writes "The Orlando Sentinel reports that a google search was made for the term 'foolproof suffocation' on the Anthony family's computer the day Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter Caylee was last seen alive by her family — a search that did not surface at Casey Anthony's trial for first degree murder. In the notorious 31 days which followed, Casey Anthony repeatedly lied about her and her daughter's whereabouts and at Anthony's trial, her defense attorney argued that her daughter drowned accidentally in the family's pool. Anthony was acquitted on all major charges in her daughter's death, including murder. Though computer searches were a key issue at Anthony's murder trial, the term 'foolproof suffocation' never came up. 'Our investigation reveals the person most likely at the computer was Casey Anthony,' says investigative reporter Tony Pipitone. Lead sheriff's Investigator Yuri Melich sent prosecutors a spreadsheet that contained less than 2 percent of the computer's Internet activity that day and included only Internet data from the computer's Internet Explorer browser – one Casey Anthony apparently stopped using months earlier — and failed to list 1,247 entries recorded on the Mozilla Firefox browser that day — including the search for 'foolproof suffocation.' Prosecutor Jeff Ashton said in a statement to WKMG that it's 'a shame we didn't have it. (It would have) put the accidental death claim in serious question.'"
Why didn't she just put the kid up for adoption?
In this case the prosecutors and justice system were incompetent to prove this person was the killer.
In other cases they're incompetent to tell that the prosecutors and justice system have failed to prove the person was the killer.
When we execute convicted people there is no chance to catch the errors that are executing people who are not guilty. Not guilty people are killed because the system isn't adequate to execute only the guilty.
We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.
--
make install -not war
She was found innocent, and a bunch of big media dipshits, and powerful figures are still trying to lynch her. Why? She's poor, and in all this rubble, they want one big poor villian to crucify, so they can shift the focus away.
Part of the assault on her character includes the fact that case was concieved out of rape, something that would have every major neo-liberal "feminist" group up in arms if it was someone the system was protecting.
I'll tell you something else. I'll contrast this to another femme fatale who got out of prison around the same time. "Amanda Knox"
http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/print-edition/2011/10/21/seattle-pr-firm-reveals-efforts-to.html?page=all
Looks like the media industry wasted no time revealing if you got money to spend on a PR campaign they could fix your broken character flaws and get murder raps thrown out.
if its any more proof of just how biased the system is, and the system is run by hoardes of PR/advertising goons and lawyers, who seem to want nothing more than to shake you down for verbal and character protection money.
Of course the real enemies of this system are those who can't raise enough money to pay for their services.
Its sick, its real sick.
"If the search didn't hit, then you must acquit."
Yes it probably would. And where exactly is the issue? Police should investigate all angles.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Maybe she was planning some autoerotic asphyxiation and didn't know how to spell "asphyxiation!" Jeez, you people, always jumping to conclusions!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bad example, but still proves the point. This datum of a search would not be enough to shift someone from not guilty by reason that I am not sure to absolutely guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. This WOULD be worth something in a Wrongful Death lawsuit, where the standard is merely the preponderence of evidence, but no one has standing.
What is the /. interest in this story? It already kinda disgusting how these local crime stories dominate the national media, but now that the case is over with double-jeopardy attached, it appears on /. just because a search term was involved? Big whoop.
That's one of those questionable items....
I search for a lot of things, because I don't know everything. When we're watching a TV show, I may do a quick search to see how plausible a portrayed scenario is.
Who's to say that someone else in the home did or didn't search for something else. Not everything is a conspiracy, sometimes it's just a coincidence.
Based on what came out about how the whole thing was handled, it doesn't sound like the murder was very organized. I'd find it hard to believe that she did any sort of in-depth research on how to do it, based on the result. We're only getting a snapshot of what was searched for. One item of thousands. If the other surrounding searches were related to suicide, then it portrays a grieving mother (or other family member) looking for a foolproof way to end their own life.
But hey, she was convicted by the media long before it went to trial, why not take everything as proof the courts are wrong.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You are right in that it's no proof in itself. What makes it suspicious is the timing.
That mork format was really something else. Whoever thought that having the browser history stored in an impenetrable format with no tools to read it should turn in their nerd badge.
You are right in that it's no proof in itself. What makes it suspicious is the timing.
And even the combination of search and timing aren't proof. But that's why we have juries, whose job it is to weigh the totality of the evidence. If the jury was teetering on the edge of convicting but could find just enough doubt to call it reasonable, perhaps this bit of information would have pushed them the other direction. Or not. But it's the sort of thing that should have been presented to them.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Did the local newspaper actually get a copy of the hard drive?
"Repeated requests by Local 6 beginning in 2009 for a copy of the hard drive that contained the Internet histories were denied by the state attorney's office, which claimed -- correctly, it turned out -- it did not have the data in its possession."
This kind of request should be denied outright, not because they don't have it.
I've googled
r@ygold
hussyfan
babyshivid
kingpass
Doesn't mean I've killed a killed, raped, and videotaped the aftermath of a kid.
I also have the old crappy anarchist cookbook, a ebook on better living through chemistry
as well as googling how to assassinate the president and get away with it.
also how to murder my wife in a dolcett fashion, or use ammonium nitrate and methanol to visibly protest against the city hall the raising of property taxes...
google searches mean squat.
In IE it doesn't clear anything but the cache that YOU can see. There are a number .DAT files (index.dat I think) that store your COMPLETE history. There are tools to recover this data and this is what this idiot used on her computer image. Firefox also has a database of browser history that I'm pretty sure is also NOT cleared just like IE. Chrome I'm least sure of but judging from the fact the other browsers may not clear history I wouldn't bet that it's any better - I'd be interested in hearing from someone that knows.
Also, the "secure" browsing that IE does? It caches things normally and then deletes them when you close the browser. It's far from "secure". In fact I'm not even sure it's a secure delete that's done. FireFox does this better, I assume Chrome does as well since of the three it handles security the best despite being based on WebKit.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
No, given that the prosecution tried to phone it in, the jury came to the only conclusion they could come to. They got it right. If that verdict doesn't match the facts, crucify the prosecutor that couldn't be bothered to do his job properly even though he was handed a gimmee.
I wonder if this another case of certifications being treated as evidence of competence and experience. With the hundreds of infosec certs out there, and law enforcement agencies essentially being too ignorant to know the difference, or even to know if a certification has any value, I wonder if this happened because of incompetence disguised by a certification? Who doesn't know to look at all the browsers installed on the system? Seriously, that's such a boneheaded mistakes its frightening to think it happened.
The follow up to this should be an investigation into the whole certification process for all digital forensics persons working on this case, and if the certification turn out to be a joke, banning them and everyone that has the cert.
Python
You need to be very careful in using people's searches in court. As an example, I run role-playing games, some of which are set in the modern world. I've searched for all sorts of information on criminal activity.
It is actually the prosecutor's job to put 2 and 2 together. Everything I have seen about the prosecution suggested that they didn't even present all of the available evidence to the jury. It's worth noting that just because you saw evidence in the media that was enough to convict, it doesn't mean the prosecution presented it to the jury.
Back before cars had emission controls there was a class of people known as "shadetree mechanics" that could actually fix a car without knowing much about what they were doing. No formal or even informal training, but they got by because of simplicity of the engines at the time. I know of someone in the computer forensics business that rails against "shadetree forensics" because it will be the downfall of computer forensic examination as a whole.
Someone I know in the FBI has rather strong words about pushbutton forensics where if you click the right button you get an answer. Maybe not the right answer, but something to put in a report. In some ways, computer forensics tools are moving in that direction with more and more automation and less and less understanding. When it takes several weeks of intensive training to understand a tool it does in some ways open the doors to this sort of use.
What we have here is very simply a case of pushbutton forensics. The examiner failed to conduct a proper examination of the computer and was misled by getting some easy results. These easy results were put in a report and passed on. Nobody ever questioned the examiner about what he or she might have missed - like the simple and obvious question of "What about alternative browsers?"
This is altogether too common today. Yes, there is a lot of training out there for people and there are various certifications, but none of it means the person doing the examination is actually performing an examinations or just pushing buttons to see what pops out. No, the certifications are not a joke and it takes a lot of effort to get certified. Unfortunately, there is little followup once someone is certified it is just assumed that they know what they are doing and how to perform a correct examination.
In defense of examiners I must say they all have huge backlogs and the pressure to deliver a report quickly is incredible. But that doesn't excuse being sloppy and at its core pushbutton forensics is just being sloppy.
And, it would also be evident that your searches related to the game being played.
Is for her to get into an armed robbery attempt to recover her sports memorabilia and she'll be doing time for what she deserves. :) Hope it doesn't take too long, though.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Damn. Must now resist urge to Google "foolproof suffocation."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Or just do your search from a livecd. Of course then you still have to worry about the data stored by your ISP.
I guess back in 2008 most people still used Internet Explorer. I guess the foresincs team were used to 95% of people using IE 6 just 4 years earlier and it never dawned on them to ask what the red fox over the world icon was on her computer?
It also makes me wonder if use a minority browser like Opera today if I could get away with the same crime. 4 years later it is not just geeks who use alternative browsers but everyone and their brother runs the top 3.
http://saveie6.com/
I found it a bit creepy when searches like that started finding the slashdot article I was currently reading. Presumably something to do with referrer links which trigger the google spider.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Useful things those index.dat files. We used to use them at work when someone was accused of looking at porn when they should be working (happened a lot). That was before we got a decent proxy server.
Incidentially: Smoothwall, win. RM Smartcache, fail.
Really? Do you think it'd be evident to a jury of non-gamers? When the prosecution has only submitted the searches as evidence that support their case, dismissing all the obviously game-related searches as unimportant?
Casey Anthony, thou art ephemeral.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
So because she googled for "foolproof suffocation" that makes her automatically guilty in your eyes?
It's a total fuck up to not notice it, and, in the hands of a skilled interrogator almost certainly enough to get a full and convincing confession. If she actually is innocent, which I personally doubt, it's quite likely that explaining this would have made her give a sufficient explanation that the case would never proceed. If she is guilty then all they had to do was to insert it at the right moment when she's given a completely incompatible explanation of events, question her about it and end up with her confessing in a way that they could prove was true. Having said that; if they can make this kind of mess, they would probably get the interrogation wrong too.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I would like to know how she got off but Hans Reisier didn't Not that I believe(d) Reiser was innocent, but the level of doubt seems the same, except for one thing. Reiser was weird. As a weird person who is slightly more law abiding then the average person, I find the idea that I could be convicted of something because I act weird disturbing.
That is the real question. Why was it rushed? There was no physical evidence to her. Just lies and uncooperativeness by her. Had they done their jobs and waited until the had more evidence instead of rushing to trial because the big flapping/talking heads were yelling and screaming, she would be going to trial now (after court date set) and would be taking either a plea deal (assuming one was even offered, which in this case it probably would not be), and be in jail in 3-4 weeks for the rest of her life (be it taken early by the state or not).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
n/t
I think computer searches should usually not be used as evidence in trials at all; there is too much potential for bias and misinterpretation.
The President has a "Kill List." The death penalty is executed, at least, as the result of a trial by jury. Capital punishment is not even close to the thing that gives the government "too much power."
There's this guy called counsel for the defense. He isn't there for decoration.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'd hate if someone from the government ever got ahold of my searches while watching Breaking Bad...
Where's Dexter when you need him :)
Bow before me, for I am root.
Well, mine aren't too bad. I already knew the explosives. I don't care to know how to cook drugs. The only thing I looked up was his source of ammonium nitrate. I was really surprised that it was correct.
I spoke with someone who is a chemist (like scientist, not drug manufacturer), and he said other than leaving a few things out, it was very accurate. I noticed the same with the explosives. Some key piece was left out.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.