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US Prosecutors Say Clearing Browser Data Can Be Obstruction of Justice

Posted by timothy on from the goodness-and-light dept.

The Nation reports that 24-year-old Khairullozhon Matanov, an associate of the since-convicted Tsarnaev brothers, faces charges not of conspiring with the Tsarnaevs, but of obstructing justice, and one aspect of the actions he took should probably concern anyone who has crossed paths online or in real life with subject of law enforcement scrutiny, and subsequently cleared their browser history. From the article: The feds finally arrested and indicted him in May 2014. ... There were three counts for making false statements based on the aforementioned lies and—remarkably—one count for destroying "any record, document or tangible object" with intent to obstruct a federal investigation. This last charge was for deleting videos on his computer that may have demonstrated his own terrorist sympathies and for clearing his browser history. What about using incognito mode?

5 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Link? by therealkevinkretz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Usually when you say "from the article" you make the word "article" all blue and linky.

    1. Re:Link? by DaHat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The summary is poorly worded.

      It's not that clearing your browsing history, throwing out old logs/emails or flushing your toilet are inherently illegal, it's when you use them and why.

      If the cops are knocking at your door and you decide to flush the drugs, that's obstruction, if you just hacked someone's system and then wiped all of the local logs on your machine to hide the evidence, that's obstruction. If however you have as a routine process... not to retain any email older than say... 30 days and purge pretty regularly (either manually or automatically), that's not obstruction, that's just good cleanliness, and if some incriminating evidence happens to be wiped out on day 30, it's a lot harder to prove that you were doing so to hide your wrongdoing rather than simply not wanting to have to keep around old Amazon offers which clutter your inbox.

      --
      Help Brendan pay off his student loans
  2. Re:Deleting videos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How does that compare to deleting 30,000 emails while Secretary of State AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress? Because apparently that isn't worth talking about, so I'm trying to understand the difference.

  3. Re:Incognito mode by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    on the contrary, since incognito mode never creates the records sought in the first place, a federal prosecutor cannot then cite the federal statute forbidding the destruction of the records.

  4. Incognito Mode - Godless Communism! by RevSpaminator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When incognito mode is outlawed, only outlaws will have incognito mode. :)