Google Searches Used in Murder Trial?

mcrbids writes "Well, the details are a bit scant, but it seems that the content of Google searches were used to help establish intent in a murder trial. Will police in the future simply serve a subpoena to Google to find out what you've been thinking about? While this use of that information makes sense, at what point does your privacy give way to public concerns? Should police be able to search through your search history for "questionable" searches before you've been arrested for a crime, and what effect would this have on the health of society?"

Clueless!

[Threni (635302)]

> Will police in the future simply serve a subpoena to Google to find out what
> you've been thinking about?

How would Google know what someone has been thinking about?

Re:Clueless!

[by Anonymous Coward]

How would Google know what someone has been thinking about?

They're Google.

Re:Clueless!

[Gary Destruction (683101)]

Well you bring up a good point. I mean, how do they know that the search wasn't circumstancial? Just because he was looking up lake depths, doesn't necessarily mean that he was using that information to hide his tracks. He might have thought about going fishing after killing his wife. Stranger things have happened. It may be unlikely that he was going fishing after he killed his wife, but the fact is, they can't prove what was going through is mind when he was doing the search. They have strong reason to be

Re:Clueless!

[Agarax (864558)]

Evidence like this is usually used in conjunction with other evidence. Like if they think you set off a pipe bomb they could use reciepts of you buying PVC pipe, duct tape, and a bunch of nails, a pound of C4 found in your apartment, along with a search on "how to build a pipe bomb" to get a conviction.

Re:Clueless!

[RKBA (622932)]

When I was in high school a friend and I used to mix our own black power and explode pipe bombs in his father's field (it was a farming area) during the winter when there were no crops to damage. Can you imagine what would happen if any children tried that today?

Even stranger to today's society, our parents knew and approved of our activities. FWIW, we both had First Class Radio Amateur Licenses and were in all the math/science/electronics classes together, so we weren't totally clueless about what we were doing. This was back in a time (~1955) when a group of us kids would think nothing of grabbing our .22 rifles, 12 gauge shotguns, pistols, or whatever we owned and favored (my cousin had a lever action 30-30 rifle just like "The "Rifleman" did on the television program of that name), and head out in the farming fields hunting Jack Rabbits - which were pests to the farmers.

Re:Clueless!

[Viper Daimao (911947)]

yeah exactly, this is a very stupid summary just trying to troll for some reactionary privacy outcries. Guess what? if you get arrested for a crime you're privacy is going to be invaded a whole lot more than just "what you searched for at google". Your phone records get inspected, your computer gets inspected, heck, you're house gets searched. Somehow we are supposed to be concerned that your internet searches can be accessed when the police have already arrested you after getting an arrest warrent and invaded your home after getting a search warrent? Since when is your behavoir on the internet more private than what you have in your own closet?

Re:Clueless!

[Shakrai (717556)]

How would Google know what someone has been thinking about?

Gee, based on just the searches that I do? They could figure out that I work for a mental health agency, that I used to work for an insurance agency, that I'm considering getting engaged, that I perfer credit unions to banks, that I've filed or am considering filing bankruptcy, etc, etc, etc. Don't even get me started about my porn perferences ;)

I can't even say that they couldn't pin all that down to an actual name any more either since I'm using G-mail and it receives the same cookie that google.com does.

Re:Clueless!

[mlarios (212290)]

If you've filed bankruptcy or are considering it, I would caution against getting engaged.

Re:Clueless!

[BrainInAJar (584756)]

Actually, it's the perfect time for it... you don't drag your spouses credit rating down with yours, and you don't fold your debts in to theirs either

Re:Clueless!

[toddestan (632714)]

If you've filed bankruptcy or are considering it, I would caution against getting engaged.

Why not? When she leaves and takes half, she won't be getting much, now will she?

Re:Clueless!

[dubl-u (51156)]

Don't even get me started about my porn perferences ;)

Dude, that you perforate your porn is TMI.

Re:Clueless!

[forkazoo (138186)]

Well, you don't write
site:asstr.org filthy drugged school girl nipple-clamps
into the search field unless there is *something* on your mind. That said, when did we start prosecuting thought crimes?

moronic question

[by Anonymous Coward]

Will police subpoena google? No, because in this case, the
search history was recovered from the local hard drive.

Note to self

[ThatGeek (874983)]

Note to self: Remeber to clear browser cache before killing someone.

Thanks for the reminder slashdot!

Re:Note to self

[Duhavid (677874)]

Note to self: Remember to do a few leading searches on the computer of the person I am trying to frame for a crime.

You need a reminder?

[TCQuad (537187)]

You mean you've forgotten about this [kstatecollegian.com] already???

Obvious Answer

[Transient0 (175617)]

The stated use (subpeonaing google for information on a person who has been arrested and they are building a case against) is perfectly reasonable, assuming they have reason to believe google would have useful evidence. That's what happens when you get arrested, they try to collect evidence to use against you from any source the can.

And of course, the slippery slope case presented in the intro copy would NOT be reasonable. If i am arrested for valid suspicion i would expect them to try to build a case against me. But, in a free society, it is not acceptable to have everything i do fed into a system which is flagging people as POTENTIAL criminals.

so: yes. and no.

Re:Obvious Answer

[Seumas (6865)]

I have not read the article (look at my UID, I've obviously spent many years being conditioned to not read articles). However, was this information gathered via google or just by searching this guy's cache? Or was it gathered by getting his login information for his google account from him (or his computer) and then doing a search of his history?

The reason I ask is that google talks about how the information they gather (including in search history, I guess?) is aggregated and in no way identifiable and linkable to an individual. So, then, how could a subpeona to google result in anything useful being returned?

However, this isn't a huge deal, really. I'm not one of those detestable "if you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" idiots, but the thing to learn here is that it's okay to look up "snap" and "neck" and even "how to murder someone" via google or any other engine. However, if you actually ARE going to murder someone, you probably should not look up "snap" and "neck" or "how to murder someone" via google. Or, rather, if the authorities are trying to tie a suspect to a murder, he is not going to be convicted soley on a few google searches. It will just be additional circumstancial evidence to add to the pot.

These sort of things only become a problem when they start seeking out suspects and disrupting innocent people's lives because the people made particular searches in a search engine. So rather than saying "We're pretty sure this guy killed this other person and we want to see his google history", they start going through all of google's data and investigating every person with suspiciously strange search keywords just in case whoever they are have committed whatever crime against whatever unknowned victims and are suspects soley because of the information they sought.

Re:Obvious Answer

[Yottabyte84 (217942)]

According to the article, this information was recoverd from his computer.

Re:Obvious Answer

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

However, if you actually ARE going to murder someone, you probably should not look up "snap" and "neck" or "how to murder someone" via google.

Usually those who get caught are not "profr. Moriarty" cold-blooded murderers who calculate all their movements and erase all possible evidence. But rather emotionally unstable people who, in a desperate situation, opt to kill the one causing them trouble

And when you're in a desperate situation, you usually don't think "Ah... will the police use the google caché

Bad affect, exposes the obvious

[external400kdiskette (930221)]

that a lot of bored people in the supposed privacy of their own home will search for a lot of crazy things that in 99.99% of cases they have no intention of carrying out.

I don't see any controversy here

[usermilk (149572)]

"Should police be able to search through your search history for "questionable" searches..."

Yes they should. I think that using a search engine to research methods of breaking someone's neck and water levels in nearby lakes is evidence that should be available to officers trying to find out who broke someone's neck and dumped them in a lake.

While this evidence alone is not enough to incriminate someone it does provide extra evidence to lead to their future incarcination. Lets face it, things add up and being able to find the pieces of a puzzle is an important part of researching a crime.

You can't arrest someone for looking at certain things but knowing they looked at those things is important in figuring out if they did commit a crime.

Re:I don't see any controversy here

[mustafap (452510)]

>You can't arrest someone for looking at certain things

Oh yea? ;o)

Re:I don't see any controversy here

[donutz (195717)]

I think that using a search engine to research methods of breaking someone's neck and water levels in nearby lakes is evidence that should be available to officers trying to find out who broke someone's neck and dumped them in a lake.

What if there are no suspects in the case? Should the police be able to subpoena Google for a list of all searches from all IP addresses used in the area with search terms related to water levels and/or breaking someone's neck?

Re:I don't see any controversy here

[slackmaster2000 (820067)]

I disagree.

Well, I guess it depends on the service when trying to determine how much privacy you should expect.

I live in a small isolated town of less than 50,000 people. Let's say a local serial killer crops up and the police use public library records to find out that over the past year I've checked out a dozen books about serial killers, more than anybody in town by a long shot. Does that make me suspect? In their minds it very well may, but logically it should not. (this issue came up with the Patriot Act, if you remember) Why the hell would I be so interested in serial killers? Am I some kind of sicko?

1) A person should feel free to pursue knowledge that isn't specifically illegal without fear. This is a very important aspect of a free society. You can't determine intent by analyzing what a person has chosen to learn about. If I do a bunch of research about the theory of evolution, does that mean that I'm a scientist learning about evolution, or does it mean that I'm a christian fundamentalist looking for flaws to prop up the idea of intelligent design? You can't be certain. So maybe you find out that I'm a christian, does that sway you in one particular direction? Well, it might, but it *shouldn't*. And so on and so forth...it can really snowball until you think you've really got me pegged.

2) The police are not infallible, by any means. It is not uncommon that when a good suspect is found (good being subjective), they will concentrate most of their efforts on that suspect, sometimes overlooking clues that would lead them to the real perpetrator. Plenty of people have been wrongfully incarcerated due to purely circumstantial evidence.

RTFA

[Jeian (409916)]

The information on the searches came from his browser history, not from Google.

Let's conduct an experiment...

[aurb (674003)]

*launches google*

*types "how to bomb white house"...*

**KNOCK KNOCK**

"Who's th....

Re:Let's conduct an experiment...

[zerocool^ (112121)]

"WE ask the questions around here!"

Re:Let's conduct an experiment...

[Reziac (43301)]

LOL!! good one.

Conversely, there's the Sgt.Schultz approach:

A: Knock, knock.
B: Who's there?
A: What are you asking ME for??

Why not?

[xTown (94562)]

Some employers already Google potential employees. Information available on you, through searches, is public information. Anyone can get it.

In this case, it looks more like they went through the guy's web caches on his computers. Assuming the computers were properly obtained, they're evidence. I don't see anything scary or privacy-killing here. Yes, the details are sketchy--but if he's on trial right now for a crime committed two years ago, it's pretty safe to say that he was arrested for the crime before t

Already done

[dg41 (743918)]

This isn't new. Last year, I was a juror on a trial for various sex/computer crimes, and part of the evidence admitted were the search strings from Google in the IE history/cache. In the interest of keeping my lunch down, I'm not going to reprint some of the searches here. We'll just say that they're bad.

Re:Already done

[Seumas (6865)]

Who hasn't done some weird ass searches, though? Hell, I've done searches on the old "26 ways to kill a person" howto. That doesn't mean I'm going to do it. But if I've killed someone and they then use my searches as *additional* evidence in my trial, there's no problem with that. Just don't go out hunting blindly through every individual that's done that search to pin a crime on them.

Re:Already done

[kesuki (321456)]

That's why real criminals [slashdot.org] use firefox ;)

Anyone stupid enough to use IE to aid in committing a crime Deserves to have the book thrown at them.

Privacy?

[daniil (775990)]

In most cases, privacy on the Internet is an illusion. People simply don't realize that the things they post on their web page or in their blogs is, unless they protect it with a password or something, visible to everyone. I've already seen a few people deleting their blog entries because they didn't want some of the things they had posted to be public. And there's probably thousands of people that have gotten hurt because of something personal they posted, not realizing that what they wrote is going to be

Why shouldnt they be allowed to?

[chrisxkelley (879631)]

I dont see why police shouldn't be allowed to search through your google history- or anything else on your computer for that matter, just provided that they have a warrant. It's no different from searching through your house or any of your personal belongings, which is perfectly fine provided that they have a warrant or reason to do so.

Sounds like Madison Ave. material to me...

[toupsie (88295)]

Need information to help with killing your wife? Choose Altavista, the Cops would never think to ask us!

Visit altavista.com and search "Snap Neck"

What an inflammatory submission...

[Jester99 (23135)]

"Details are sketchy...?"

From the article:

"More than two years after Janine Sutphen's body was discovered floating in a Raleigh lake, investigators continue to find new evidence on computers seized from Robert Petrick's home that prosecutors say support their arguments that Petrick killed his wife.

The Google search was the latest in recently discovered evidence found in the 100 million pages of content removed from computers"

In other words, they looked at the files on his computer as evidence. That's been done for ... years now. Said files happened to contain browser history. Not much news here.

Might they subpoena google in the future? Maybe, but that hasn't happened yet...

Plain old browser history

[ewg (158266)]

The article says "investigators continue to find new evidence on computers seized from Robert Petrick's home", suggesting that this information came from the familiar browser history feature rather than from Google's databases.

Since the defendant was already a suspect, reviewing his browser history is no different than searching his personal papers or anything else in his home.

If you leave something in public...

[borgheron (172546)]

It can be used as evidence against you. For example if a murderer smokes a cigarrette and discards the butt in the trash and a police officer sees him do it. There is no need for probable cause or any of the other legal fancy-shit, since the article was discarded, and was in plain site.

The same should apply to the internet. What you leave here is not private. By definition if it is on the internet it should be considered *public*. Far too often I've run into people who don't want you to look at their "private" webpages even though they are not protected and indeed are searchable on the net! People like this need to take a clue from this trial. If it is on the internet it is public... PERIOD.

GJC

Think of the trees

[imrdkl (302224)]

100 million pages removed from his computers is simply inexcusable.

If Google really wants to "not be evil"...

[bloxnet (637785)]

...in my personal opinion the biggest thing Google could do would be to have a personal preferences section and a "wipe my history" button. When clicked, this action would wipe out all of the data collected on me to date (by my cookie data, gmail data, etc).

That would probably be the single biggest proof that Google truly does stand apart from other all other companies.

Google Sets

[Tim Ward (514198)]

Google Sets will need a little more work before it knows what people are thinking. It's OK for things like "Beatles songs" or "Cambridge colleges", obvious stuff like that, but when I entered the names of half the girlfriends I've had it didn't come out with the other half of the list.

RTFA.

[Max Threshold (540114)]

The article isn't very technical, but it suggests that the evidence was obtained from the suspect's computer, not from Google itself. In other words, they looked at his browser cache. I doubt Google keeps logs of every search -- at least, not for very long.

Prove it!

[Bonewalker (631203)]

My concern with any kind of computer or technology being used as any kind of evidence is this: prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was sitting at that keyboard and computer and performed whatever searches you claim. Unless there is video of me sitting there, and it shows the screen as well, how can anyone prove that I was the one who did the searches.

Unless you have a computer that is physically off-limits to anyone else in the world, I don't see how this can easily be proven. Even if I logged into to some account, that doesn't prove I was there doing it. For example, my browser remembers my name and password for several accounts. Anyone else could sit down and my computer and log into those accounts.

So, whose to say someone isn't trying to frame me by entering my home and using my computer to make 'questionable' searches? For that matter, who's to say someone couldn't have remoted in to my computer and performed those searches.

Re:Searched

[ndansmith (582590)]

More than two years after Janine Sutphen's body was discovered floating in a Raleigh lake, investigators continue to find new evidence on computers seized from Robert Petrick's home that prosecutors say support their arguments that Petrick killed his wife.

Last week, a forensic investigator discovered that Petrick allegedly researched lake levels, water currents, boat ramps and access about Falls Lake just four days before he reported Sutphen missing on Jan. 22, 2003.
~http://www.wral.com/news/5287261/detail.html [wral.com]

Yes, the info was found on his hard drive, not acquired from Google or his ISP or anywhere else.

Re:Searched

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

info was found on his hard drive

He could have browsed from a live CD and not left a trail. I wonder how many crimes are being solved because criminals don't know how to take a few simple security steps?

Re:Searched

[toddestan (632714)]

He could have browsed from a live CD and not left a trail. I wonder how many crimes are being solved because criminals don't know how to take a few simple security steps?

That won't help if law enforcement subpoenas Google, or any other website for that matter (yeah, I know that in this case Google wasn't involved, but I could easily imagine it happening). Probably the best thing to do is use someone else's open access point, with your live CD on your laptop.

Re:Searched

[shawb (16347)]

It takes less than a minute to mug someone and get away with a wallet full of cash

It takes longer than that to come up with the plan, obtain the tools necessary, find the right place, sufficiently mask your identity, wait for a good target to come by, flee the scene, get rid of any evidence and then have a convincing alibi when all is said and done.

Not following all of those procedures (and probably more) will significantly increase your risk of getting caught. And all this for... what's the average

Re:Subpoenas

[kaufmanmoore (930593)]

He was arrested based on evidence such as a neuse being found at his home, he has contridicted himself in his testimony, other searches revealed on his computer were for boat ramp and current info for the lake where the body was found and cadaver dogs picked up on scents at his house. He has already been found guilty of fraud for using his wife's name to obtain a loan after her dissappearance. Those are just the things to come out in the first week of testimony

Libraries never have

[mschuyler (197441)]

Libraries never have kept information of what you had checked out once it is returned (unlike Amazon that has a record of all your purchases). I've been working with library circulation systems for thirty years, and ALWAYS there is an RFP requirement that "the system shall not keep a record after the item is returned. The link between patron and item must be broken..."

(Full disclosure statement: Patron history is allowed and kept for so-called "Outreach patrons" who enjoy a personalized level of library se