Could Cops Use Google As Pre-Cogs? 376
theodp writes "Remember the Pre-Cogs in Minority Report? Slate's Will Oremus does, and wonders if Google could similarly help the police apprehend criminals based on foreknowledge collected from searches. Oremus writes: 'At around 3:45 a.m. on March 24, someone in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., used a mobile phone to Google "chemicals to passout a person." Then the person searched Ask.com for "making people faint." Then Google again, for "ways to kill people in their sleep," "how to suffocate someone," and "how to poison someone." The phone belonged to 23-year-old Nicole Okrzesik. Later that morning, police allege, she and her boyfriend strangled 19-year-old Juliana Mensch as she slept on the floor of their apartment.' In theory, Oremus muses, Google or Ask.com could have flagged Okrzesik's search queries as suspicious and dispatched cops to the scene before Mensch's assailants had the chance to do her in." I bet you're already thinking of just a few reasons why this might not such a good idea.
Re:Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for t (Score:4, Informative)
For the time being, though, I suspect your searches will mostly be used against you to demonstrate intent after-the-fact. If it looks like an accident but you searched on those terms ahead of time, that would be the difference between murder 1 (And possible death penalty) and manslaughter and a slap on the wrist.
Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy (Score:5, Informative)
That's because someone walked into a record store and pulled up the rental history of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.
In case anyone else haven't heard the story [wikipedia.org] before:
During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals, wrote about it for the Washington City Paper.[22] Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans only had such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.
Re:Things for which cops usually give warnings (Score:5, Informative)
You: Uhm, you Honor, I plead "nuh uh." I was on a bicycle on an uphill incline where the posted limit is 65 mph. How could I possibly speed?
JudgeBot: Citizen, your statement provides no merit against the charge. TrafficCamera19203-Z is a sworn officer of the court, and his observation of your intention to speed is admissible as evidence to this court. [gavel BANG!] The court finds you guitly. Bailiff, please escort this Citizen to the Payment Processor.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine (whom we shall call "Art", for he is now an art teacher) was once involved in a city-wide scavenger hunt, where one item to find was "a police officer's badge number". Art and his team found a patrol car stopped in front of them at an intersection. Doing what all (un)reasonable young adults do in their young adult years, they chose the most straightforward method to get the officer's attention: they rammed his car.
More or less... They pulled up behind the car, then inched forward while the cop gave them quizzical looks in his mirror. Moving as slowly as he could manage, Art bumped the officer's vehicle. The officer got out, asked what was going on, understood the situation, laughed about it, gave them his business card (in lieu of his badge number, which is apparently against city policy to give out), and let them off with a warning to avoid hitting patrol cars in the future.
Despite Slashdot's popular opinion, most police officers are decent people. Treat them as such, with respect for the fact that they're trying to do their job, and they'll usually treat you decently as well.