Anything You Search For Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law

http://singularityhub.com/2011/02/15/anything-you-search-for-can-and-will-be-used-against-you-in-a-court-of-law/#more-27347

by rms • 15 years ago

39 28 15 years ago

singularityhub.com

ceejayoz5• 15 years ago

Jared Loughner isn't going to be put to death for his search history, he's going to be put to death (or more realistically, lifetime psych containment) for killing six people and wounding more than a dozen others, including a prominent public figure.

Library records have been used in this manner for decades, if not longer. The records are obtained via due process of law. What's the issue here?

rms5• 15 years ago

No, I really think Jared Loughner is going to be put to death for his search history.

Loughner is obviously insane, but these searches establish legal sanity, which means knowing the difference between right or wrong, or understanding the consequences for your crimes. Jared Loughner commmited this crime strongly expecting that he would be put to death for his actions.

Does the USA even have lifetime psych confinement? Insanity defenses are almost never successful.

yummyfajitas2• 15 years ago

I've heard a proposal, which I generally tend to think is a good idea: eliminate the insanity defense, but give judges the option to send criminals to the insane asylum rather than prison.

Does anyone with greater knowledge see flaws with this idea?

ceejayoz5• 15 years ago

Knowledge of likely punishment and knowledge of wrongness are entirely separate things. Protesting the government in Iran might get me punished, but that doesn't make it wrong.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

Does the USA even have lifetime psych confinement?

Different jurisdictions have different laws. Loughner looks set to be tried both under United States federal law and Arizona state law.

John Hinckley, Jr.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/hi...

was found not guilty by reason of insanity after attempting to assassinate President Reagan. He has been confined since then as an involuntarily committed psychiatric patient who is deemed a danger to other persons, although he has had some supervised furloughs from the hospital. He is likely to be under court supervision his entire life. The law under which Hinckley escaped conviction has since been changed, so that an insanity defense for a crime committed in DC is now much harder for the defendant.

septicmadman• 15 years ago

Do you say that because you think his search history is the piece of evidence that is going to prevent him from making a successful insanity plea?

The requirements for an insanity defense are far too strict in their current state after the reform legislation in 1984. Legal sanity is a backwards concept, but given the amount of effort that is being put into this case (and that he's being tried in federal court for killing a federal judge) this is exceptional and not something we should use to define what is common practice.

However, it's certainly wrong and I dislike it, but at least my internet license will be shiny.

ZachPruckowski• 15 years ago

I still don't see the problem here. The only things that aren't subpoena-able are things covered by doctor-patient confidentiality or attorney-client privilege. My phone calls and credit cards and bank accounts are similarly subpoena-able. The privacy issue isn't that this stuff is made available to investigators through due process after they already have reasonable suspicion, it's when investigators just go on a fishing expedition through it.

redrobot5050• 15 years ago

FYI: Arizona does not allow the insanity defense in capital crimes. If he's mentally fit to stand trial, he faces the death penalty.

homecoded• 15 years ago

Good point. But: The library records will have an actual eye witness, though. In that case a real person can confirm that the 'bad guy' got the book personally. That is not the case with online search.

The problem I see is that it makes people easier to frame if 'soft evidence' suddenly becomes 'hard facts'.

Here is a highly constructed unlikely case as an illustration: Suppose, someone sneaks into someone else's house. He performs a few searches on fundamental religious topics and bomb building and plants some large quantities of questionable substances in the garage. Then the intruder tips off the police anonymously. How do you think the home owner will get out of this?

I don't know. I'd be at least a little bit worried.

VladRussian• 15 years ago

your best hope in this case is that you'll be tortured and still wouldn't be able to provide the details on the questionable substance - that will prove your innocence.

ceejayoz5• 15 years ago

The searches aren't really necessary in that situation, though. Planting guns and explosives and tipping the cops off anonymously would do the job just fine without a search history. Hell, the cops might consider the lack of search history an indication that the person covered their tracks by using a library computer or something.

jellicle• 15 years ago

Note that all public libraries, sensitive to the personal privacy issues that borrowing records represent, only retain such records for the minimum time required. In most libraries once you've returned a book the library retains NO record of the borrowing and thus there is nothing to subpoena.

Compare and contrast with Google's "we'll keep records of all of your searches forever" policy.

gojomo• 15 years ago

Google does say they'll anonymize search log data after 9 months... though I can't find any claim they'll ever delete it, and it's not clear how strong the anonymization is.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/networking/google-changes-d...

kqueue• 15 years ago

This site looks like TC.

rms5• 15 years ago

Yes.

dstein• 15 years ago

We are entering what I call the "Orwellian Era" of computing. Google, Apple, and your data carriers (wired & wireless) are battling it out right now to become the one all-powerful big brother.

Encryption will absolutely be outlawed in the future.

ceejayoz5• 15 years ago

Booga booga!

rms5• 15 years ago

No, the cypherpunks have already won.

sili• 15 years ago

Maybe the problem is expectation of privacy when we act in a public sphere (The Internet). Imagine a situation without a computer where a murder suspect with an insanity plea was seen weeks in advance browsing a gun store and asking really specific questions of the clerk. He was acting in public space and has no expectations of privacy.

Should we amuse that any unsecured, unencrypted activity is equivalent to doing it in public and if we want privacy than we should encrypt our communications? Maybe there should be an easy to use mode in browsers which encrypt your traffic. Any information stored on your computer would be treated as private in the same way as mail correspondence is.

Also, the judges should really be careful and demand that any search history evidence presented before them should really be relevant to the case. Just because I was curious at one point how much a handgun would cost, does not necessarily mean I am guilty of the murder that I am accused of. The evidence should be persistent and without doubt linked to the crime.

Anything You Search For Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law

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