Unwise — Search History of Murder Methods 532
nonprofiteer writes "Mark Jensen's home computer revealed Internet searches for botulism, poisoning, pipe bombs and mercury fulminate. A website was visited that explained how to reverse the polarity of a swimming pool — the Jensens had a pool — by switching the wires around, likening the result to the 4th of July. The State pointed out the absence of Internet searches on topics like separation, divorce, child custody or marital property. Julie Jensen died as a result of ethylene glycol in her system, an ingredient found in antifreeze. On the morning of her death, someone attempted to 'double-delete' (apparently unsuccessfully) the computer's browsing history, which included a search for 'ethylene glycol poisoning.'" What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
If I'm not mistaken, you're condoning the murder of his wife?
To be fair to Timothy, he's an idiot.
consent (Score:5, Informative)
Once you give permission to a search, you don't get to retroactively revoke permission once they find evidence against you. It would be a completely different matter if they just barged in without his permission or a warrant. That would be unconstitutional; this however, is just stupidity on his part.
Re:Rule number one for breaking any law (Score:5, Informative)
Drill press? Do you know how easy it is to encrypt a drive?
Not that I would trust that alone but, if you do a reinstall of the OS over an encrypted drive, nobody is recovering what was there previously. Why bother with the theatrics, and expense. Not to mention, that the holes in the drives may not prove much, but they tell them you are hiding something.
Besides, its hard to get to work in the morning without breaking ANY law. How would you even know? You could be violating the law RIGHT NOW just by reading this. In fact, you probably are in some jurisdiction. Who is to say that jurisdictions law doesn't apply to you right now? Try explaining why it doesn't apply after they have picked you up while you are there on vacation.
Ridiculous? Absolutely, but the point is, the world is a big and complicated place full of lots of laws. Luckily, you can get away with ignoring the vast majority of them, most of the time. However, those few that they really have sticks up their ass about, like murder, honestly, its pretty wrong anyway so start with not doing it.
Anything that is not so wrong, but, still illegal, and they still have sticks up their ass about... well... chances are you have time to plan more and encrypted drives should just make sense. I mean shit, the Ubuntu installer had it as an option, last I looked. Also, he can delete all he wants, as long as they can find the right cookies they can probably recreate much of your search history. Really just best not to rely on clearing the cache.
-Steve
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
The housing of a pool light is normally grounded. If it is connected to an active circuit the pool becomes a death trap if someone in the water grounds themselves through another conductor.
Another Article (Score:4, Informative)
I was curious about this...particularly what it means to "reverse the polarity of a swimming pool"... um, I didn't know they had poles :) (clearly something to do with the wiring...)
Anyway: http://volokh.com/2011/01/04/interesting-example-of-the-use-of-computer-search-evidence [volokh.com]
Apparently its an interesting case. I haven't read much yet, about to dive in, but, it does quickly raise the question of... who did the searching? Looks like the defense claim is suicide. I know that if I planed to kill myself by a posion, I would want to know quite a bit about how it worked and what to expect.
Though, I am not sure thats the one I would choose.... nicotine maybe.... or nitrous oxide... glycol tastes sweet if I remember, its why dogs sometimes die from drinking antifreeze, so seems like a good choice to slip in food or drink... so... hard to say. Have to read...
-Steve
Re:Rule number one for breaking any law (Score:5, Informative)
It would have automatically died yesterday along with everything else that didn't pass before the ending of the 111th Congress.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
It would take significantly more than that. You'd have to bypass the ground fault protection and then see to it that the resulting short to ground didn't actually draw enough current to trip the branch circuit breaker on overcurrent.
Its pretty difficult to electrocute someone by messing around with the pool electrical equipment.
Just saying.
There was other evidence (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For how long? (Score:3, Informative)
They would have to obtain consent (or have a warrant) each time they came to your house.
Re:Police Doing Actual Police Work? (Score:5, Informative)
That's an amazing post. Except for "And destroying evidence is illegal, every sentence in that post is wrong (assuming you're referring to the USA, at least).
And so is that one, destroying evidence can be perfectly legal, ask any document destruction company. It's destroying evidence that is currently being sought that is illegal.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't know if it was a polarity problem.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)