6 ms·

Deleting your browser history could land you in prison

130 points by apo 11y ago

wonkaWonka 11y ago
The real problem here is that the legal system, under which many sophisticated laws are prosecuted, is under the stewardship of a lot of common, everyday people of middling intellect. So, yeah, browsing history possesses all the legal integrity of pocket litter and fast food receipts, and who's to say which information on a typical consumer-class hard drive constitutes a forgery contaminated by trojans and rootkits, versus what is actual legitimate forensic evidence, but that doesn't stop zealous prosecutors and judges from placing this sort of evidence in front of bored, apathetic juries, serving jury duty, because their name came up on the list after getting a traffic ticket.
- hga 11y ago
  Unlike so much other relatively new law, this satisfies mens rea, "the guilty mind" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea) so I can't say I have problems with it. Heck, it echoes a favorite Proverb, the start of 28: The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion. If I were to realize a (now very much ex-)friend had just maimed and murdered a bunch of people, my first thought would not be to dispose of evidence.
  - ipsin 11y ago
    I delete my browser history often enough, but each instance is not evidence that I believe I've committed any crime. Do browsers actually log when you delete history? Is there any record or log beyond traces on the filesystem?
    - abalashov 11y ago
      I don't think so, but an empty history, or a history consisting solely of access over the past few days, might be taken as evidence that it was wiped.
      - krick 11y ago
        So what? I might delete it just for my own convenience. (BTW, it's irrelevant if somebody does so, but if you are curious: I actually do. The reason is it is much simpler to search for something in the cache/history when it's small.) There's no reason whatsoever to think that I'm hiding something. I mean, if I was an investigator, I surely would pay attention to that, but I cannot (or shouldn't be able to) treat absence of evidence as evidence of "hiding something". No evidence is no evidence and nothing more.
  - MaulingMonkey 11y ago
    > my first thought would not be to dispose of evidence. Which is exactly why I might delete my browsing history as I occasionally do without realizing that I was disposing of "evidence". Were it my first thought, I suspect my second thought would be "that's a terrible idea" - and my third to buy another computer, lest my daily, innocuous, use of it be cast as any form of evidence tampering.
  - juliangregorian 11y ago
    I guess if you have no fear of recrimination or are a sociopath you can be confident in your righteousness? Sounds about right. The great thing is that people with your attitude get caught up in stings just the same as those who have mens rea. Police don't look at evidence and think "here's a guy/gal with nothing to hide", they think "here is someone we can charge".
- wpietri 11y ago
  > who's to say which information on a typical consumer-class hard drive constitutes a forgery contaminated by trojans and rootkits If only we had some sort of system where two legal experts argued this in front of a neutral third party, possibly calling in technical experts as needed. If only.
  - wonkaWonka 11y ago
    If only that didn't require expertise, both on the part of the defendant and the defense team, who both probably struggle at keeping their e-mail clients properly configured. You do understand that it's quite the common perception, outside the technical field, that computer evidence is nigh-infallible, nearly on the level of DNA evidence. So much that, once brought into context, it's pretty much believed as iron-clad evidence by non-technical people.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
miander 11y ago
Sickening stuff. It's even worse when you realize you're afraid of ending up on a watch list for speaking out about this kind of abuse.
- brandon272 11y ago
  Which is why am ashamed to say I don't say anything controversial online anymore. Hell, even posting this makes me nervous. Though I guess that's one of the goals of government surveillance – obedience.
  - justwannasing 11y ago
    They turned me into a newt!
    - twothamendment 11y ago
      ...I got better.
  - meric 11y ago
    Once I wrote a popular post concerning the government limiting freedom. Within a day or two I got called with a survey about my internet usage from the "Finance department" who talked really fast when I questioned on what authority. I answered him questions anyway about all the internet websites I frequent and communities I'm part of. He even asked me what IRC channels I used. I gave every detail. That was a few years ago.
blatherard 11y ago
This sounds like another "banal-sounding activity that everyone does is suddenly illegal!" misunderstanding. The charge is that someone destroyed potential evidence on their computer with the intent of preventing that evidence from being found by an investigation that they believed was likely. In the non-digital realm, this is like shredding business records when you suspect you're being investigated. Shredding isn't illegal, but attempting to obstruct an investigation is, and (IMHO) rightfully so. Which is to say: deleting your browser history as part of an effort to thwart a criminal investigation could land you in prison.
- LordKano 11y ago
  It's worse than that. Deleting your browser history if they government says that you thought it might one day be relevant in an investigation can land you in prison. For example: You're downloading run of the mill adult-on-adult pornography and one of the links that you click redirects you to a child porn site, you weren't looking for child porn and you didn't want any but you inadvertently browsed to a site that hosts it, so you delete all of your cache because you don't want that on your computer. Well, if that site was a honeypot and when the authorities come investigating, they'll use your cleared cache as proof that you knew you were doing something illegal and prosecute you for it despite the fact that you didn't intentionally break the law.
  - blatherard 11y ago
    I did a little googling, and destroying the porn would actually be the right thing to do and so shouldn't get you in trouble. According to "18 U.S. Code § 2252A - Certain activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography", an affirmative defense is not having much and either deleting it promptly or reporting it: (d) Affirmative Defense.— It shall be an affirmative defense to a charge of violating subsection (a)(5) that the defendant— (1) possessed less than three images of child pornography; and (2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to access any image or copy thereof— (A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such image; or (B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and afforded that agency access to each such image. (source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A)
jpatokal 11y ago
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the prosecution, their tactics or the charges, but this article is sensationalist to the point that you could change the headline to "emptying your trash could land you in prison". > prosecutors argued that he made a conscious choice to destroy materials he knew could be used in a future investigation. See, that's the point here. If he had happened to have (say) VHS tapes or even handwritten notes of those sessions, and he had thrown them out after the bombing, he could have been slapped with the same charges. The primary difference here is that emptying your browser history leaves a telltale sign, while chucking out some physical object does not. Also, this article is conveniently omitting the fact that he also pled guilty to three counts of essentially lying to the FBI: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/26/the-fbi-is-trying-to-destroy-my-life.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/26/the-fbi-is-... Remember kids, don't talk to police. Ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
- j42 11y ago
  The timeline listed in the source he provides clearly states that he made an effort to "delete files [...] reformat his computer" after the events, indicating knowledge he could be implicated as an accomplice. That said, I think using the "mens rea" argument associated with implicit guilt is how dangerous precedents are born. I'm specifically concerned with this excerpt from from Sarbanes-Oxley act which is being misappropriated by prosecutors: >Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. Deleting videos and attempting to reformat a computer after the Boston marathon are done knowingly. Clearing one's cache/browser history is in many situations an automatic action, and it's troubling to find it lumped in with pre-meditated action. I see justification for 3 counts of obstruction, not 4. The 4th looks like an attempt to set the modus operandi of the courts in dealing with our web/online history, and I don't think anything which draws attention to that is necessarily a bad thing...
BendertheRobot 11y ago
That's odd. I thought SOX applied to public corporations. How a guy was charged with violating it seems odd. Too bad SOX doesn't apply to government.
- MCRed 11y ago
  Specifically, Hilary Clinton's email scandal would be a crime under SOX, as would be the recent IRS data destruction. The problem isn't that there aren't laws that criminalize these activities, there are. The problem is that the government will never prosecute itself, and thus the government lets the corrupt get away with it increasing corruption over time. One example of this is that there's been no reform of voting systems despite their failure in 2001, and increasing evidence of voter fraud in every presidential election since.
msutherl 11y ago
As pertains to the 'delete files [...] reformat his computer", would he have been absolved if he had instead "lost" his computer?
donatj 11y ago
Every day it seems I read something that makes me believe I'm living in an absurdist Dostoevsky novel.
- krick 11y ago
  You mean Kafka, maybe?
  - donatj 11y ago
    Eh, I was thinking more along the lines of The Double with the world around me making less and less sense, whilst living under a crushing bureaucracy.
Falkon1313 11y ago
The wording seems to indicate taking a specific action to delete specific things. So would having a browser/extension that automatically cleans up after itself imply guilt? Even people who don't do anything illegal, immoral, or unethical online might legitimately not want their computer constantly polluted with all the droppings from every site they visit - tracking cookies, cached ads, etc. What about browsing from a VM that loads a pristine provisioned image every time you boot it? Seems a reasonable way to avoid both that pollution and reduce likelihood of being infected by malware or other security issues. The responsible thing for any good patriotic law-abiding citizen to do. Either way, it would be a standard operating procedure. So anything that they didn't find would not be something that you had intentionally deleted.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Now you know why companies have these annoying policies which automatically delete all email older than 90 days.
x0054 11y ago
I think this article in several places equates actively deleting your browser history with using an incognito mode in chrome, or another method of automatically deleting, or even preventing the creation of history all together. This is not the case, you are perfectly fine having a system that will automatically delete your history, at least for now, it's not illegal to do that. This is also why many companies have a very precise document destruction procedures. I used to run a company that was involved in the document management industry. Many companies track very closely the lifecycle of every document they create, and many have programs that will purge the document literally on the day when it can be delete. If you have to keep a document for 7 years, there are systems that will purge that document at midnight on the 7th anniversary of it's creation. This is perfectly legal as long as it's all automatic. I think under Sarbanes-Oxley you do have an obligation to preserve evidence once the investigation is open, so you would have to disable the automated system. But as long as your documents are destroyed as soon as it's legally possible, you are basically covered.
CaiGengYang 11y ago
This is really weird! So lets say if a person once made some stupid remarks on a blog or somewhere else, and wants to erase his or her internet presence so that future employers can't see it, it is a crime too ?
sillyryan 11y ago
..and I thought my daily dose of crazy was over!
crystaln 11y ago
If you find out someone who has used your computer was involved in an act of terrorism, then delete evidence of their guilt, I'm not sure I understand why that would not be a crime. This guy was not prosecuted for deleting his browser history, he was prosecuted for deleting information he knew was relevant to a criminal terrorism investigation.
chmike 11y ago
Deliberated evidence destruction should logically be sanctionned. I don't see anything wrong here. In a crime investigation, privacy should not come into play. That would make it easy to get away with it. Put yourself on the side of the victims if you don't understand.
aykutcan 11y ago
Whats next ? Accessing internet will make you potential terrorist ?

130 points by apo 11y ago

The real problem here is that the legal system, under which many sophisticated laws are prosecuted, is under the stewardship of a lot of common, everyday people of middling intellect. So, yeah, browsing history possesses all the legal integrity of pocket litter and fast food receipts, and who's to say which information on a typical consumer-class hard drive constitutes a forgery contaminated by trojans and rootkits, versus what is actual legitimate forensic evidence, but that doesn't stop zealous prosecutors and judges from placing this sort of evidence in front of bored, apathetic juries, serving jury duty, because their name came up on the list after getting a traffic ticket.

hga 11y ago
Unlike so much other relatively new law, this satisfies mens rea, "the guilty mind" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea) so I can't say I have problems with it. Heck, it echoes a favorite Proverb, the start of 28: The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion. If I were to realize a (now very much ex-)friend had just maimed and murdered a bunch of people, my first thought would not be to dispose of evidence.
- ipsin 11y ago
  I delete my browser history often enough, but each instance is not evidence that I believe I've committed any crime. Do browsers actually log when you delete history? Is there any record or log beyond traces on the filesystem?
  - abalashov 11y ago
    I don't think so, but an empty history, or a history consisting solely of access over the past few days, might be taken as evidence that it was wiped.
    - krick 11y ago
      So what? I might delete it just for my own convenience. (BTW, it's irrelevant if somebody does so, but if you are curious: I actually do. The reason is it is much simpler to search for something in the cache/history when it's small.) There's no reason whatsoever to think that I'm hiding something. I mean, if I was an investigator, I surely would pay attention to that, but I cannot (or shouldn't be able to) treat absence of evidence as evidence of "hiding something". No evidence is no evidence and nothing more.
- MaulingMonkey 11y ago
  > my first thought would not be to dispose of evidence. Which is exactly why I might delete my browsing history as I occasionally do without realizing that I was disposing of "evidence". Were it my first thought, I suspect my second thought would be "that's a terrible idea" - and my third to buy another computer, lest my daily, innocuous, use of it be cast as any form of evidence tampering.
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  I guess if you have no fear of recrimination or are a sociopath you can be confident in your righteousness? Sounds about right. The great thing is that people with your attitude get caught up in stings just the same as those who have mens rea. Police don't look at evidence and think "here's a guy/gal with nothing to hide", they think "here is someone we can charge".
wpietri 11y ago
> who's to say which information on a typical consumer-class hard drive constitutes a forgery contaminated by trojans and rootkits If only we had some sort of system where two legal experts argued this in front of a neutral third party, possibly calling in technical experts as needed. If only.
- wonkaWonka 11y ago
  If only that didn't require expertise, both on the part of the defendant and the defense team, who both probably struggle at keeping their e-mail clients properly configured. You do understand that it's quite the common perception, outside the technical field, that computer evidence is nigh-infallible, nearly on the level of DNA evidence. So much that, once brought into context, it's pretty much believed as iron-clad evidence by non-technical people.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

miander 11y ago

Sickening stuff. It's even worse when you realize you're afraid of ending up on a watch list for speaking out about this kind of abuse.

brandon272 11y ago
Which is why am ashamed to say I don't say anything controversial online anymore. Hell, even posting this makes me nervous. Though I guess that's one of the goals of government surveillance – obedience.
- justwannasing 11y ago
  They turned me into a newt!
  - twothamendment 11y ago
    ...I got better.
- meric 11y ago
  Once I wrote a popular post concerning the government limiting freedom. Within a day or two I got called with a survey about my internet usage from the "Finance department" who talked really fast when I questioned on what authority. I answered him questions anyway about all the internet websites I frequent and communities I'm part of. He even asked me what IRC channels I used. I gave every detail. That was a few years ago.

blatherard 11y ago

This sounds like another "banal-sounding activity that everyone does is suddenly illegal!" misunderstanding. The charge is that someone destroyed potential evidence on their computer with the intent of preventing that evidence from being found by an investigation that they believed was likely. In the non-digital realm, this is like shredding business records when you suspect you're being investigated. Shredding isn't illegal, but attempting to obstruct an investigation is, and (IMHO) rightfully so. Which is to say: deleting your browser history as part of an effort to thwart a criminal investigation could land you in prison.

LordKano 11y ago
It's worse than that. Deleting your browser history if they government says that you thought it might one day be relevant in an investigation can land you in prison. For example: You're downloading run of the mill adult-on-adult pornography and one of the links that you click redirects you to a child porn site, you weren't looking for child porn and you didn't want any but you inadvertently browsed to a site that hosts it, so you delete all of your cache because you don't want that on your computer. Well, if that site was a honeypot and when the authorities come investigating, they'll use your cleared cache as proof that you knew you were doing something illegal and prosecute you for it despite the fact that you didn't intentionally break the law.
- blatherard 11y ago
  I did a little googling, and destroying the porn would actually be the right thing to do and so shouldn't get you in trouble. According to "18 U.S. Code § 2252A - Certain activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography", an affirmative defense is not having much and either deleting it promptly or reporting it: (d) Affirmative Defense.— It shall be an affirmative defense to a charge of violating subsection (a)(5) that the defendant— (1) possessed less than three images of child pornography; and (2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to access any image or copy thereof— (A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such image; or (B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and afforded that agency access to each such image. (source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252A)

jpatokal 11y ago

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the prosecution, their tactics or the charges, but this article is sensationalist to the point that you could change the headline to "emptying your trash could land you in prison". > prosecutors argued that he made a conscious choice to destroy materials he knew could be used in a future investigation. See, that's the point here. If he had happened to have (say) VHS tapes or even handwritten notes of those sessions, and he had thrown them out after the bombing, he could have been slapped with the same charges. The primary difference here is that emptying your browser history leaves a telltale sign, while chucking out some physical object does not. Also, this article is conveniently omitting the fact that he also pled guilty to three counts of essentially lying to the FBI: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/26/the-fbi-is-trying-to-destroy-my-life.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/26/the-fbi-is-... Remember kids, don't talk to police. Ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

j42 11y ago
The timeline listed in the source he provides clearly states that he made an effort to "delete files [...] reformat his computer" after the events, indicating knowledge he could be implicated as an accomplice. That said, I think using the "mens rea" argument associated with implicit guilt is how dangerous precedents are born. I'm specifically concerned with this excerpt from from Sarbanes-Oxley act which is being misappropriated by prosecutors: >Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. Deleting videos and attempting to reformat a computer after the Boston marathon are done knowingly. Clearing one's cache/browser history is in many situations an automatic action, and it's troubling to find it lumped in with pre-meditated action. I see justification for 3 counts of obstruction, not 4. The 4th looks like an attempt to set the modus operandi of the courts in dealing with our web/online history, and I don't think anything which draws attention to that is necessarily a bad thing...

BendertheRobot 11y ago

That's odd. I thought SOX applied to public corporations. How a guy was charged with violating it seems odd. Too bad SOX doesn't apply to government.

MCRed 11y ago
Specifically, Hilary Clinton's email scandal would be a crime under SOX, as would be the recent IRS data destruction. The problem isn't that there aren't laws that criminalize these activities, there are. The problem is that the government will never prosecute itself, and thus the government lets the corrupt get away with it increasing corruption over time. One example of this is that there's been no reform of voting systems despite their failure in 2001, and increasing evidence of voter fraud in every presidential election since.

msutherl 11y ago

As pertains to the 'delete files [...] reformat his computer", would he have been absolved if he had instead "lost" his computer?

donatj 11y ago

Every day it seems I read something that makes me believe I'm living in an absurdist Dostoevsky novel.

krick 11y ago
You mean Kafka, maybe?
- donatj 11y ago
  Eh, I was thinking more along the lines of The Double with the world around me making less and less sense, whilst living under a crushing bureaucracy.

Falkon1313 11y ago

The wording seems to indicate taking a specific action to delete specific things. So would having a browser/extension that automatically cleans up after itself imply guilt? Even people who don't do anything illegal, immoral, or unethical online might legitimately not want their computer constantly polluted with all the droppings from every site they visit - tracking cookies, cached ads, etc. What about browsing from a VM that loads a pristine provisioned image every time you boot it? Seems a reasonable way to avoid both that pollution and reduce likelihood of being infected by malware or other security issues. The responsible thing for any good patriotic law-abiding citizen to do. Either way, it would be a standard operating procedure. So anything that they didn't find would not be something that you had intentionally deleted.

tedunangst 11y ago
Now you know why companies have these annoying policies which automatically delete all email older than 90 days.

x0054 11y ago

I think this article in several places equates actively deleting your browser history with using an incognito mode in chrome, or another method of automatically deleting, or even preventing the creation of history all together. This is not the case, you are perfectly fine having a system that will automatically delete your history, at least for now, it's not illegal to do that. This is also why many companies have a very precise document destruction procedures. I used to run a company that was involved in the document management industry. Many companies track very closely the lifecycle of every document they create, and many have programs that will purge the document literally on the day when it can be delete. If you have to keep a document for 7 years, there are systems that will purge that document at midnight on the 7th anniversary of it's creation. This is perfectly legal as long as it's all automatic. I think under Sarbanes-Oxley you do have an obligation to preserve evidence once the investigation is open, so you would have to disable the automated system. But as long as your documents are destroyed as soon as it's legally possible, you are basically covered.

CaiGengYang 11y ago

This is really weird! So lets say if a person once made some stupid remarks on a blog or somewhere else, and wants to erase his or her internet presence so that future employers can't see it, it is a crime too ?

sillyryan 11y ago

..and I thought my daily dose of crazy was over!

crystaln 11y ago

If you find out someone who has used your computer was involved in an act of terrorism, then delete evidence of their guilt, I'm not sure I understand why that would not be a crime. This guy was not prosecuted for deleting his browser history, he was prosecuted for deleting information he knew was relevant to a criminal terrorism investigation.

chmike 11y ago

Deliberated evidence destruction should logically be sanctionned. I don't see anything wrong here. In a crime investigation, privacy should not come into play. That would make it easy to get away with it. Put yourself on the side of the victims if you don't understand.

aykutcan 11y ago

Whats next ? Accessing internet will make you potential terrorist ?