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.
bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm - what reasons could there be to legitimately do these kinds of searches?
- checking whether something seen on some crime drama actually makes sense
- checking whether a stupid newspaper story makes sense
- checking whether an outrageous story from a neighbour makes any sense
- looking for ideas to write a crime novel
- learning about the effects of certain things, say, for medical interests (medical students)
Either way - what people do should be what people do on their own; locking people up because
they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent. And where will you stop?
Will you allow someone to a gas station and fill up their car after they had a bad fight with their
partner, whom they know will have to cross a road somewhere in the next hour? Or should you lock
them up after the fight? (independently of whether you or your partner started the fight)?
How about filling your car, and going for drinks later - having a car with a full tank of gas at
your disposal afterwards? Time to lock you up?
Sure, at a guess, looking up 'ways to kill people in their sleep' I would also think makes you
more likely a potential murderer than filling up your car. But, where do you draw the line on
what's legitimate and what isn't?
Also, maybe after you read how painful or possibly difficult your goal is - who's to say that
reading about it might not actually lead you to give up the thought? And then you still get
locked up because of something you looked up, where the result of the search itself already
deterred you (though, obviously, that can't be seen in any google search strings - you just
stop searching)...
Also, the only goal you'd reach is that now a potential murderer has to break in somewhere
only to look up how to murder someone - and then the wrong person would get arrested...
(...which might give the best possible version - look it up on the victim's computer - get them arrested!)
There are so many ways to screw this up - as bad as it is, until someone _actually_ tries
to go through with it, don't interfere...
The pre-cog route will just make things a LOT worse for civil liberties / personal freedom.
Re:bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I search stuff I want to know all the time. I've searched some horrible, horrible things but never wanted to do them. This is ridiculous and should never be used. But of course, it will eventually. It had already been mentioned that searched using the word torrent would one day be seen as suspicious and possibly prosecuted.
Re:bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, you're both right, in the sense that (A) there are many "legitimate", non-suspicious reasons to search for "controversial" subjects, and (B) more importantly, no search has to justify its own "legitimacy" (which is your point) because of fundamental rights of privacy, particularly investigation without due process and probable cause.
GPP was suggesting perfectly good answers to a question. You're pointing out that the question shouldn't have to be answered at all without some other evidence-based reasonable suspicion.
Re:bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as how they can't really compel you to spend too much time with them until they arrest you, and if they do arrest you they must then provide you with legal counsel, this would not work in any way for a lot of potential criminals, as one's lawyer would also basically tell you to say nothing at all.
Until there's at least a crime-in-progress, you haven't done anything. Conspiracy to commit is difficult when there's no crime either, especially if there isn't even any materiel for a crime. Even then, one could research a crime, gather supplies for a crime, and be almost to the point of committing a crime, but then at the last moment, decide not to commit the crime. Still no crime has been committed.
Re: (Score:2)
Conspiracy to commit is difficult when there's no crime either
And moreoever, conspiracy takes at least two willing conspirators. I doubt that google could be considered to be a co-conspirator...: It's not a person, and even if it was, it didn't intentionally help in planing the crime.
mostly bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
There are all sorts of problems with this idea, of course. Oodles of them. But it isn't entirely without merit. The authorities cannot (at least under current legal doctrine) charge you with a crime you might commit in the future, and I don't think they ever should. But if you're figuring out how to kill someone, and the cops show up at your door saying "we think you're planning to kill someone and you'll be the first person we talk to if someone is killed", that's going to be a rather strong deterrent, and probably prevent that crime. The question is whether it can be done without irreparable harm to personal liberties... and I doubt that.
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Maybe we're splitting hairs now, but when they charge you with "conspiracy to commit murder", they're not "charging you with a crime you might commit in the future" (i.e., murder). They're punishing you for what you already did: take steps narrowly optimized for leading to someone's death, involving the cooperation of others intending to achieve this end.
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Correct. Unless there's a very strong correlation that one behavior overwhelmingly leads to another that is a crime, then using one's research to attempt to predict a crime will lead to nothing more than the police showing up to essentially ask you if you're going to commit a crime. Even if you were, you simply say, "I'm sorry officer, but I have no legal obligation to speak with you on this or any other matter."
This sounds like a bigger money sink-hole than "the war on drugs". If this ever became law I'll be sure to purposely draw suspicion several times a day. Eventually I'll be able to bleed the entire police budget on these trivial calls... and I hope everyone does the same.
Just think of the increase in parking fines, speeding tickets for going 1 over the limit, etc, etc, required to pay for this garbage. Nothing is free and if this is how you wish to allocate police resources then you are a complete failure
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Correct. Unless there's a very strong correlation that one behavior overwhelmingly leads to another that is a crime, then using one's research to attempt to predict a crime will lead to nothing more than the police showing up to essentially ask you if you're going to commit a crime. Even if you were, you simply say, "I'm sorry officer, but I have no legal obligation to speak with you on this or any other matter."
This sounds like a bigger money sink-hole than "the war on drugs". If this ever became law I'll be sure to purposely draw suspicion several times a day. Eventually I'll be able to bleed the entire police budget on these trivial calls... and I hope everyone does the same.
Just think of the increase in parking fines, speeding tickets for going 1 over the limit, etc, etc, required to pay for this garbage. Nothing is free and if this is how you wish to allocate police resources then you are a complete failure.
And then as they collect your info into nice neat reports, "Oops sorry that got leaked to the public."
Suddenly you no longer have a job.
Oh look this politician has looked at porn, suddenly he can no longer be elected. Oh look you went to an online dating site, please deposit $10,000 or the results will be sent to your wife.
There are a lot bigger issues that policemen wasting their time here.
Re: (Score:3)
which is rather contraproductive:
The word is "counterproductive" and no it isn't.
- your searches will be read, this is the opposite of what you want to achieve
If he does nothing, the cops will get to read them anyway. This makes it not worth their while to do it. Protesters garner attention from the police all the time. Does that mean one should not protest?
- you may stop the police from catching real terrorists by making such a stupid thing
Not sure if trolling or diving face first into the Kool-Aid.
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I think this is good.
A lot of people who would commit an impulse crime would think twice if they new the police were aware of their research.
Call me a socialist, but I think saving people, and working as a community to help people through troubled times is more important than catching them after they have committed crimes
You're AC, so you're trolling, but is slate.com trolling?
seriously there is no way anyone would actually think "Yeah, police should knock on my door whenever i search for illegal things"
What's next? Check out Catcher and the Rye and the police question you? John Lennon was killed by a man with the book, so something must be wrong if you want to read it, right? [wikipedia.org]
And who thinks we have enough police to show up at someone's house every time they do an illegal search?
This story is so ridiculous that
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It appears this is a RETROACTIVE search, not a search without cause. They are tracing the path of the killer, so they can use it as evidence in a trial.
As for precognition, RT News had a story back a few months ago about Google having enough information from billions of users to "predict" the future, similar to psychohistory in Asimov's short stories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGBpKhTWNQE [youtube.com]
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My guess is Google is choosing to not take advantage of the info they have in that way, otherwise those users might stop using Google.
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How do you know? This could very well be a good idea, or it could be useless.
I would like to see some data. How many people search for several way to make someone pass out? is it noise? is there strong correlation between the search and an incident happening?
When you are searching on a public network for information on how to harm someone , then yes, it is pother peoples business.
Let me know when you have you own private internet.
Just lie if you where zig-zagging down a public highway would also be my busin
Ban crime novels (Score:2)
crime drama [...] crime novel
Perhaps this could be used by some social conservative group as a way to ban crime novels by bending constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press without breaking them.
medical students
Can the Google account be linked to an accredited med school?
locking people up because they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent
It can be done without setting precedent in the case law sense. It might just involve enforcing traffic laws more strictly against someone because they MIGHT do something.
Re: (Score:3)
So only medical students should be able to learn about those topics?
What about if I just like to learn?
A lot of scholarly journals are paywalled (Score:2)
So only medical students should be able to learn about those topics?
As it is right now, a lot of scholarly journals are paywalled. The only free access is through a subscribing institution.
What about if I just like to learn?
<devils-advocate>Then become a medical student.</devils-advocate>
Re: (Score:2)
You can learn a lot without reading scholarly journals.
I can't afford it, nor do I have the time to do it.
Log in to search for this keyword (Score:3)
So... you actually log in to a Google account whenever you want to do a search?
About a week ago, Slashdot ran a story [slashdot.org] about Google warning its Chinese users that China tends to turn off access to Google for people who search for certain keywords. Likewise, Google could require that users who search for specific keywords or combinations thereof log in first if a country requires it.
Issue more tickets to the person of interest (Score:2)
First, you mean speech- novels are art, not news.
Novels are also printed on a printing press. Besides, since when is the distinction important? Both are commonly analyzed lumped into a media-agnostic concept of freedom of expression.
And where the hell did that nonsense about traffic court come from?
I didn't mean traffic court as much as traffic stops. It's not that a ticket issued to a "person of interest" would lead to harsher penalties as much as that a "person of interest" would get more tickets in the first place.
Leniency is given to non-habitual offenders- ie. based on prior behavior, not potential.
Please allow me to spell out the scenario more explicitly. First, some pre-cog data mining scheme produce
Re:Issue more tickets to the person of interest (Score:4)
data mining alerts of a highly probably hit. Law enforcement, or preferably a social service person, shows up to ask the person some questions.
What a completely idiotic idea.
The moment that this happened:
1) Bored teenagers would start doing these searches.
2) Hackers would write Trojans to do them on targets' PCs.
3) Real killers would use an anonymising method to find whatever they wanted and not raise a flag.
Exactly the same kind of security theatre that most of the post 9/11 precautions are. Complete waste of time and money in achieving their stated aims and huge invasion of privacy for innocents caught in the net.
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.
New use for Facebook (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone deemed psychotic is tagged to an automated watch service that silently records their activities. Once a predetermined set of data points is reached, intervention and forced treatment commences during pre-crime stage.
So you're waiting for them to write six lines with their own hand?
Re:bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you are just curious.
I may be curious how a H-bomb works, but i don't have any plans on making one. ( even if i could.. )
Re:bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
A million times this. I'm a Wikipedia junky (obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]) that searches things out of raw curiosity with no applicable reason whatsoever. I've also done my share of looking at gore photos, crime scene photographs, things of that nature. I'm totally non-violent and would never hurt a fly, but if the police were to start looking at my search history and profiling me based on that alone, they'd probably want to keep a closer eye on me anyway "just in case".
Just because a particular subject interests me, that doesn't mean I'm going to emulate it. Morbid fascination does not equal intent, whether now or in the future.
It amazes me how many supposedly educated people would support things like this. This is basically just another step down the road to thought police [wikipedia.org] and telescreens [wikipedia.org]. Doubleplusungood.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:bad idea (Score:4, Funny)
So now I'm caught in a catch-22: if I don't look up its location I'm a fugitive on the run. If I look up its location I would be plotting a terrorist attack.
Re: (Score:3)
Or you are just curious.
I may be curious how a H-bomb works, but i don't have any plans on making one. ( even if i could.. )
Back in the 70's the magazine Electronics Australia did a 'Construction' article on how a terrorist could build a dirty bomb in a suburban house. I can't find any links to it right now, but it was interesting in the detail they went into. They mentioned at the time that the workers used to construct it would die from radiation exposure which came across as being an unusual expectation. However in this day an age of suicide bombers a bit of self sacrifice is the norm.
Re: (Score:2)
A dirty bomb would be brain dead simple to build, and just use common sense. ( well, and lots of $ for the supplies and delivery system.... but complexity is about nil )
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Either way - what people do should be what people do on their own; locking people up because
they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent. And where will you stop?
We've already gone down this route. The entire War on Drug Users is predicated on the belief that if we allow people to do drugs they will do bad things. We've been doing this for decades, despite the lack of any evidence for that proposition.
How exactly is "you smoked crack, so you're likely to steal something, therefore you're going to jail
Re:bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
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That's subjective. Sure, you can more easily scan to the next line, but if you let the text go all the way out to the edge of the screen you have to do less scanning. Several of his sentences would be one line on my screen requiring no scanning whatsoever.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
ALL CAPS IS THE MOST READABLE TEXT, at least according to Microsoft.
Stupid caps filters.
No, but... (Score:2)
They can always use Facebook as Post-Cogs.
The summury sums up why its a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
So.... you google how much salt would kill someone, and how pepper makes you sneeze. Later that day your housemate sneezes and a pot of salt falls onto them killing them (Hey, it *could* happen).
This is as about related as killing someone by gas/chemicals as killing someone by strangulation is.
Re:The summury sums up why its a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
This is as about related as killing someone by gas/chemicals as killing someone by strangulation is.
What if your partner wanted to try choking as a sex act? What if you Googled it to find out how dangerous and/or if there are implications to it. What if you typed "choking someone death" in Google to try to find out more about choking deaths? What if they did pass while in the act and it was truly an accident or there was something you didn't know about them (there could be countless things that could go wrong. Maybe you missed one.
Maybe you are housecleaning and you want to find out if some chemicals interact and may cause death.
Internet Answers (Score:2)
Imagine some of the answers they found to those questions on Yahoo. I can't believe they pulled it off after asking the Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering they're both under arrest, and the police have records of texts and Facebook conversations about disposing of the body, among other ridiculously incriminating evidence, I'm not sure "pulled it off" is exactly right.
Actually, sounds about right for asking Yahoo how to get away with murder. Though knowing Yahoo, the first 20 replies were "You shouldn't murder peopl
Re: (Score:2)
By "pulling it off" I meant, "actually managed to kill someone." Probably not the best phrase, but I didn't get as far as even considering them getting away with it.
No. (Score:4, Interesting)
No. [wikipedia.org]
Cops could (in theory, with the right legal framework in place, and the right IT support, and funding, etc.) use Google's data and analysis as strong indicators of suspicion. That could be useful, but it's not nearly enough to warrant an in-person police response.
An analogy would be for me to run up to a random cop on the street and ask him how long it'd take to get reinforcements to the area. It's not the kind of activity that normally happens, so I've probably earned a bit of surveillance and a few funny looks, but it's no reason to be arrested on the spot.
Re: (Score:2)
An analogy would be for me to run up to a random cop on the street and ask him how long it'd take to get reinforcements to the area. It's not the kind of activity that normally happens, so I've probably earned a bit of surveillance and a few funny looks, but it's no reason to be arrested on the spot.
The most important difference is that said cop probably would not (unless he was especially unwitting) give you actionable intelligence as a result of your inquiry. The problem scenario that happens on Google is that you actually find what you're looking for. I could see this as just another way to weed out "dumb criminals" (like anyone who robs a bank without a ski mask on) since the more perceptive criminals will just find other ways to go about gathering their nefarious intel, like looking for news sto
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
"Let's find out," the officer cheerfully replies, as he picks up the radio and calls the dispatcher. "Can I get some assistance at the corner of 3rd and main? There's some wacko here who says he comes from the Internet on a quest for knowledge and troll skins. Could be a mental patient."
Re: (Score:2)
"Let's find out," the officer cheerfully replies, as he picks up the radio and calls the dispatcher. "Can I get some assistance at the corner of 3rd and main? There's some wacko here who says he comes from the Internet on a quest for knowledge and troll skins. Could be a mental patient."
Sounds like a good way to get tazered to death...
New method of suicide-by-cop?
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The problem scenario that happens on Google is that you actually find what you're looking for.
You must have a different internet than me.
/. the best way to pick up chicks.
They may find answers but there is no guarantee the answers are correct.
It's kinda like asking
It also would not surprise me at all to discover law enforcement had set up honey pots of illicit information for the express purpose of logging IP addresses of anyone perusing said pot.
They just have Google elevate their page-rank score for certain keywords and sit and wait.
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I'm pretty sure "annoying a cop" or "looking at a cop funny" or "speaking to a cop when not spoken to" are all reasons to be arrested on the spot.
More seriously if they tried analysing such data and responding in person they'd be overwhelmed with all the false positives (that have been mentioned in other posts, people researching novels, etc) that they'd have to give up on the idea anyway.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
run up to a random cop on the street and ask him how long it'd take to get reinforcements to the area.
I hope to God that I remember this idea the next time I win a bet with a friend.
then open wifi = easy frame up (Score:2)
then open wifi = easy frame up
Re: (Score:2)
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then open wifi = easy defense
FTFY
Don't worry! (Score:2)
I bet you're already thinking of just a few reasons why this might not such a good idea.
If you are, don't worry, the police are on their way to rectify the situation. We can't have people pre-thinking that thoughtcrimes of the future are bad...
The Future Is Now (Score:5, Insightful)
People who use "encryption", care about "security" and things like "transparency" are already under suspicion of committing terrorist acts.
If you have a brain you're suspicious.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9618-newly-released-fbi-domestic-terrorism-training [truth-out.org]
Re: (Score:2)
What happens if (Score:5, Funny)
you google "people who google 'chemicals to passout a person'"?
google databases can be subpoened (Score:2)
99.999% false positives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be real, once implemented, only retards would use google without tor or whatever to do searches. And there'd still be a ton of false positives from people searching interesting things out of idle curiosity, research, verifying what they saw on TV, writing a book, etc.
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The female doesn't seem to have been arrested yet but the boyfriend has [arrests.org]. I'm expecting a breakup.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who decides what is 'suspicious'?
The really insidious part is this:
If they haven't committed a crime yet, they're not yet a criminal. Period.
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I don't have a problem with that. Of course, the burden of proof would have to be a lot higher than "googled some things".
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If they're actually making preparations to murder someone, they have committed a crime and are criminals.
And how, precisely, are they to know that the person is "making preparations to murder someone?"
Just because I own rope, duct tape, a duffle bag, and several big-ass hunting knives, which occasionally get stored together, by no means indicates I have any intention to harm another person.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hundreds-words-avoid-using-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html [dailymail.co.uk]
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Well put. The presumption of innocence requires that a crime be committed. We'd need to devise a different legal system before this question becomes important.
That is, unless this exact sort of idiocy is what leads people to want to modify the legal system. We've done dumber things before.
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Not enough "Oh HELL, NO!" in the Universe for this (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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no one would be safe from arrest ever again
And that's exactly what they want.
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I don't think it's right to arrest them (Score:2)
I don't think it's right to arrest them, but (assuming you had legal access to the search info) it sounds like a good reason to go to a judge and get a warrant to put surveillance on the suspect.
Want to undercut the people? (Score:2)
You make people afraid to learn.
There are so many problems with that kind of law enforcement that just thinking about how to list them out here makes me tired...
NO (Score:4, Interesting)
No. Our constitution doesn't allow you to be arrested for thinking about committing a crime, only for committing one.
How about we go back to swift and sure punishment that's so severe that most sane people wont do the crime? Instead, we have too many in jail for minor offenses, while the well connected can steal billions or kill people and not even get indited or get off on technicalities.
Let's fix the criminal justice system we have, not create one in which we make up more crimes that haven't happened.
Re:NO (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be surprised [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I think it would help more to go to a criminal justice system where there is only a crime if there is a victim. Then instead of punishment for its own sake the guilty party has to restore the victim. If they are incapable they would become the property ie slave, of the victim. This is allowed by the 13th amendment.
Curiosity as a crime (Score:3)
Great way to kill off any chance of a future for our country.
Author never read Cory Doctorow's "Scroogled" (Score:5, Insightful)
A quite logical extension of such thinking. When it comes to liberty of thought, the road to Orwell's 1984 is paved with 'good ideas' gone wrong.
In the late 1970's I purchased a copy (paper) of "the Anarchist's Handbook". Why ? I was doing research for a story I was writing for a Creative Writing class in college. I already *knew* how to make explosives.. I was an Engineering student !
Criminalizing people for their knowledge would mean that pretty much every Engineer will end up in jail. Yeah... that will definitely not help a modern world.
Try trackmenot (Score:2)
Let it run in your fav browser and have it use a set of search engines creating a random cloud of false searches when your online.
You IP will have AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Bing looking for terms from the daily mainstream press.
Average frequency and other settings can be used to fill logs all day everyday
When you do search try something like startpage.com
Short answer: no (Score:2)
Long answer: HELL NO!
I guess I shouldn't talk about Earthbound(snes) (Score:2)
(Suddenly sirens can be heard around my house)
Bot (Score:2)
How about 'anonymous' or somebody building a network of distributed bots which do random suspicious searches every day of the year so the suspicious data is too much to sift through?
They are already doing that (Score:2)
Except instead of arresting right away and facing slightly longer legal battles, say arrange entrapment.
It's just a misunderstanding (Score:3)
Dump Google (Score:2)
1. Use IxQuick [ixquick.com] for search.
2. Use it through TOR [torproject.org].
3. Profit.
So, how much is a life worth, anyway? (Score:2)
The question that needs to be answered at a high level is indeed, how much is life worth?
In theory, it is not permissible for law enforcement to do anything until a criminal act is committed. This means that if you (and the police) know with absolute certanity that someone is to be killed nothing can be done until they are in fact killed. There are plenty of edge cases to this but at the most extreme if you see someone with a gun walking towards someone else saying "I'm going to kill you!" in reality noth
There are so many crimes (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Just the other day (Score:4, Funny)
Showing results for How to Rap
Search instead for How to Rape
Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a popular notion, but it's unreasonable to expect privacy in public acts like searches conducted through a third party website (Google).
It is reasonable to demand privacy in your search history. I do not want my health insurance company to know that I was searching for information about a particular kind of disease. I do not want my bank to know that I was searching for information about bankruptcy proceedings. I do not want anyone to know about the sort of pornography that I search for.
To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private. Now, if walking into a video store and renting a video is something that we can do with an expectation of privacy, a web search is certainly something we should expect to be private.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I do not want anyone to know about the sort of pornography that I search for
FREEZE! Drop the box of kleenex on the floor NOW!
Re:Unreasonable to expect privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private.
That's because someone walked into a record store and pulled up the rental history of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.
Many legislators have zero problem with privacy invading laws because they always assume it won't be used on them.
The second that changed, they shit their pants and passed a law that protected everyone within the year.
If you want real reform, we need the cops to start treating judges and legislators like they treat young black men in NY City.
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: (Score:2)
To put things in perspective, the law mandates that video rental records be private.
And they only reason for this is because once upon a time, a video rental store leaked the rental history of some influential judge [wikipedia.org]...
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure if you should consider doing business with a '3rd' party as a public act. That would have some serous ramifications for consumer privacy.
That said, if the contract with Google ( there is one..and you agree to to by use ) says they can hand over your searches at will, i agree there are no guarantee there.. However, the issue here is the police using this data to predict crime, not doing research for a current ( judge sponsored ) investigation for evidence.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't google. You want to go to your address bar and type "google.com" into it then try again there.
Re: (Score:2)
But they will notice. If you use a larger search engine, your query is easier to drown out in all the other noise.
Re: (Score:2)
How in the hell do you say Okrzesik?
Fuh`-kt