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"Think of the ramifications in the future if everyone who searched something in the privacy of their own home was subject to interviews by federal agents," Spod

"Think of the ramifications in the future if everyone who searched something in the privacy of their own home was subject to interviews by federal agents," Spodek said. "Someone could be interested in how people die a certain way or how drug deals are done, and it could be misconstrued or used improperly." The problem is most people don't think like that. Most people think "why do I care, I search google for sourdough recipes and to see what the heck sus means. The chances of me getting in trouble because I did this is really low." And then they read something like this from the same place... "After investigators linked Williams to the arson through the keyword warrant, they sent Google another warrant specifically for his account, finding that he looked up phrases like "where can i buy a .50 custom machine gun," "witness intimidation" and "countries that don't have extradition with the United States." And they'll say "See, see! This works, this should be legal it catches bad people, look at what this guy was doing" Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys.

macspoofing 6y ago
>The problem is most people don't think like that. But what is the problem here anyway? If there's a crime at a location, police detectives will investigate anyone that has any connection to that location. That someone may have searched for that location is certainly relevant to the investigation, but it doesn't imply that those individuals are automatically a suspect. In fact, they will be quickly ruled out.
- candiodari 6y ago
  Mostly there are zero suspects. These subpoenas are, as you point out, ways to find more suspects. There's just one issue: they also often only turn up ONE suspect. And here's the thing with people and police: everybody lies. The victim of the crime lies. Suspects lie (but the thing is: suspects lie whether or not they've committed a crime, this is not a difference between innocent and guilty). Witnesses lie (don't want to get caught, and yes the police encourages this, at wrong parking. Police will encourage them to lie, because they can't ignore a confession of wrongful parking and they understand they'll lose cooperation if they write them a ticket for their trouble). And of course the police officers themselves lie. Whatever hope you have of finding the underlying truth in such a haystack less than a few years of work ... forget it. And then comes Google with "concrete evidence". Something that is actually true. Very likely not related to the crime, but true. So you can probably understand that this would introduce quite a big bias against a "suspect", when their real connection to the crime is "someone was shot, and this guy googled 'gun' 2 days before". Furthermore, this gives them something to put to a judge or a jury, when before they had nothing, or nothing coherent. Do you really think at this point a police officer, judged by the number of cases solved, bad guys put away, just walks away without at least applying very strong pressure on whoever was fingered ?
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Police have no obligation to prosecute a wrongful parking confession.
    - candiodari 6y ago
      Police have an obligation (and so does everyone else) to report any crime they're aware of. But the same goes stronger for police officers: they cannot have a court document (like a witness statement) they know of that contains crimes and then not report those. Any such document kills the "I didn't know" defense. And parking violations are crimes. If they have a DA that doesn't like them ... So yes they do. In theory they risk their job if they don't. Now I'm not stupid. No precinct commissioner will fire an agent for this. However they will strongly discourage making a habit out of that. And if there is even a slight appearance that they're neglecting to report it because they're friends or family of the "perpetrators", then it becomes a LOT more serious. The same goes for private individuals by the way, except your job is safe (unless it requires strict no convictions, like healthcare positions). However, this is still one of the reasons for you tell the police "I don't know. I haven't seen a thing", because if you had seen it, didn't report it of your own accord and they don't like you, you'll be paying a fine.
- idrios 6y ago
  Exactly everything candiodari said. The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. The more information you have about a person, the more you can present to a jury selective facts about them that make them look guilty. And with enough circumstantial evidence you could make quite a lot of innocent people look guilty, despite having no causal evidence whatsoever. Google is providing circumstantial evidence, not causal.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. they don't even have to put the person away necessarily. an important metric used to evaluate police departments is the clearance rate, which is just the fraction of crimes where they found someone to charge. whether or not the charges stick or get thrown out entirely does not affect this number, and would more typically be used to evaluate the state/district attorney's office. so really all the police need to look good is to collect the bare minimum amount of evidence to charge someone in a case and then move on. if the conviction rate ends up being low or a bunch of charges get thrown out, they can just say the prosecutors are lazy/incompetent. at the same time, the prosecutors can point the finger back at the police and say they throw out so many charges because the police don't collect evidence properly. as long as they drop the weak cases, plea out the middling ones, and take a few slam-dunk cases to court, their numbers will look okay too. all the links in the chain only get examined together in the few high-profile cases that linger in the news.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. There are always instances of bad process and bad outcomes, but in general that's not how the justice system works. I'm sorry for your cynicism.
im3w1l 6y ago
Crime thriller books and movies are hugely popular. I'd say a majority of people are fascinated by crime.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  I'd say a majority of people are fascinated by crime. Exactly. I’ve googled stuff after seeing it on CSI or NCIS. Or on the news, or in a movie, or whatever. You could definitely cherry-pick stuff out of my google search history to make out like I’m a big time terrorist criminal mastermind.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
>...Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys. Exactly, the problem is the people, not the system. I'm pretty sure such nonsense would never happen in a place with strong privacy protections like Germany. But the US is an authoritarian country, so the default stance is to always give more power to law enforcement.
- google234123 6y ago
  Germany doesn't have warrants?
- rbecker 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure such nonsense would never happen in a place with strong privacy protections like Germany. German government ministers announced plans to require companies like Facebook and YouTube to report certain forms of hate speech to the police and to provide the users’ IP addresses. Firms already have to delete such posts. -- https://apnews.com/article/ef38dbeb3c0d026e65f5dde6edeb3837 https://apnews.com/article/ef38dbeb3c0d026e65f5dde6edeb3837
candiodari 6y ago
> Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys. Why do you assume this will ever be put to popular vote? I mean you see this as if it's a choice from the people in a democratic republic and then your statement might be right or wrong. But reality is: the boss of public prosecutor office realises that they need more power to get the numbers they're judged on: "bad guys" put away. Whether they're actually bad is not taken into account by the people evaluating them ... So what's this person to do? And they're not even bad people, they certainly try to get the bad guys. And, sure, being vilified in the press for going after people is undesirable, but beyond that ... and of course this leads to them pinning everything on poor (ex-)criminals who don't really have a choice, and who are judged by investigators to be "bad people". Especially in youth law this is bad. Because proof is not required to convict anyone (technically, after all, "they're not convicted", just incarcerated for years), they just catch the first "bad apple" near a crime, and if there is no crime they'll just make one up. Of course the net result is more criminals when these kids lose faith in society protecting them. People do what they're paid to do. In the case of public prosecutors and investigators that's putting people (all kinds) behind bars. Also: what does sus mean ?
- blakesterz 6y ago
  > So what's this person to do? Right. I dunno what they're to do. I also don't really know which side I come down on 100% of the time. Maybe this is an ok practice? It probably works to catch bad guys more often than not. But it's also likely to be abused often. I understand the arguments on both sides, and I tend to side with the privacy side rather than the other side. But I get the arguments on both sides. > Also: what does sus mean ? Suspicious. All the cool kids say "sus" now :-)
mywittyname 6y ago
Those are the type of things that I've searched for in the past. I just like knowing things.
- ZeikJT 6y ago
  I feel like I've searched for sketchy stuff before and it's almost always in response to something on twitter or reddit where someone claims something that feels ridiculous and so I go on google to see if it's legit or not.
- behringer 6y ago
  Call me crazy, but I think this is exactly how warrants should be done. Very specific in both time and place, and used to catch a criminal that did a very severe crime. If you had been caught up, you 100 percent should have been scrutinized. Imagine if it was someone you loved a witness to a terrible crime and her car was set on fire. You'd definitely want the police to prove who it was.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I'd want worse than just having the police find the guy. That's one of the major purposes of having a centralized justice system; it protects society from our individual impulses that people who wrong us must be punished at any cost.
    - AftHurrahWinch 6y ago
      Great answer! This is what Dukakis should have said to Bush about Willie Horton.
  - ksk 6y ago
    Google as a private corporation should not be collecting evidence for the police before a crime as occurred. Spying and surveillance of the general public should never be accepted as the norm.
    - 6y ago
treis 6y ago
>And they'll say "See, see! This works, this should be legal it catches bad people, look at what this guy was doing" You lost me here. Of course people are going to conclude that arresting a person that set fire to a car in order to intimidate a witness in a sexual abuse case is a good thing. And why shouldn't they? That sounds like a slam dunk good thing for society.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  This is, actually, an anti-feature for some people. People don't like things they don't like to be effective, because they'd like to be able to argue on that basis as well. "We shouldn't torture people because it is cruel and a violation of their human rights" is a purely moral argument; "We shouldn't torture people because it is cruel and a violation of their human rights, and it isn't even effective at extracting useful information or true confessions, study after study has shown blah blah blah" is a moral argument with an effectiveness chaser thrown in. Even if you don't share the same moral framework as me, I can still possibly persuade you to act in a way I see as moral because acting immorally doesn't gain you anything but wanton cruelty. People love to do this for all sorts of arguments, from taxes to environmental or fiscal policies to their monopoly house rules. Granted, most of the time people also just pull their effectiveness claims out of their ass, but it is a very effective rhetorical technique.
- rmtech 6y ago
  > That sounds like a slam dunk good thing for society. That particular application is a good thing. But the existence of such capabilities can be a net negative, and by a huge margin. Crime is something like a "cost of doing business" of a free society. Take all the crime away with an all-seeing Eye of Sauron and you risk a technological dictatorship that opens death camps for the currently unpopular race/class and crushes all resistance.
  - treis 6y ago
    >But the existence of such capabilities can be a net negative And that's the problem with the pro-privacy side. Their argument relies on the idea that it can be a net negative but provides little evidence that it is a net negative. They argue theoretic harm against actual real world benefit. When that's not a winning argument they lament the existence of the real world benefit instead of re-evaluating their position.
fsflover 6y ago
> Most people think "why do I care, I search google for sourdough recipes and to see what the heck sus means. The chances of me getting in trouble because I did this is really low." Even though many people think like that, there is also this: https://www.socialcooling.com/ https://www.socialcooling.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363).
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Unfortunately, socialcooling describes a lot of "hey maybe" and "what if" scenarios without a lot of concrete evidence, while on the other side of the debate, there's a likely arsonist under arrest.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- TeeMassive 6y ago
  This website is the kind of stuff we need to convince people about why privacy is very important. "You may not get that dream job if your data suggests you're not a very positive person." Ever since I had access to the Internet to downl- I mean stream songs, I was always afraid of people finding out what I was listening to and corporations building a psychological profile based on what I listen. Oh you listen to some Japanese songs, hmm could mean he's into hentai porn, could be a liability. Death metal? Oh repressed emotions, possibly suicide, not good long term. Rap music? Criminal. Now this doesn't seem so far-stretched but with more facets of daily life being affected. The worse that could happen is them monitoring the life of the people who will grow up to become our future politicians, if it's not already taking place considering that most of most politicians lives is much more private compared to other people.
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    It seems like this only has an effect because people care about it for unexplained reason. If I wanted positive person to work with, wouldn't someone posing as one but in reality being negative, be effectively cheating?
SN76477 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk
syshum 6y ago
While everything you said is true, the constitution is suppose to be what protects the individual from this kind of mob thinking. General Warrants have been unconstitutional since the founding of this nation, only through some very bad "3rd party rule" exemptions to many constitutional amendments is this even thought about as acceptable.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  3rd Party Doctrine is unconstitutional but it's got nothing to do with cases where there is a warrant. warrant overrides expectations of privacy. Searching a computer database for activity directly matching a crime's attributes is not a general warrant.
vinbreau 6y ago
I worked in a bookstore in the '90s and there was a fantastic series of books, for authors, about how poisons worked, how it is like to die in certain situations, all kinds of dark stuff that was designed to help Crime Fiction writers help in areas they normally would not know enough about. Now imagine looking that stuff up on the internet for writing a book.
michaelmrose 6y ago
I have googled "machine gun", "witness intimidation", and "countries that don't have extradition with the united states" I have no plans to shoot anyone, intimidate witnesses, or flee the united states.
- bussierem 6y ago
  You sound like you might run a lot of Shadowrun games. I've run tabletop Shadowrun games, and I've never had a weirder search history than when those games are going. "Hm the players are going into the bank and need to stop some bad guys, I need a map quick" Google -> "<my bank> blueprint" "Crap they want me to describe the gun the guy has but the book has no picture" Google -> "<gun name>" etc. etc.
- chrismarlow9 6y ago
  I googled "how to make chlorine gas" after a friend mixed ammonia and bleach products thinking it would keep their dog from peeing in the same spot, and wondering why their eyes and skin were on fire.
- chmod775 6y ago
  This reminds me of "/r/eve is leaking". Examples: "How do I sell a hanger full of corpses?" https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5hepn4/how_do_i_sell_a_hanger_full_of_corpses/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5hepn4/how_do_i_sell_a...? "Does anyone know if drug production is a good source of income?" https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5g8dxc/does_anyone_know_if_drug_production_is_a_good/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5g8dxc/does_anyone_kno... "I want to kill someone, I need help." https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5j1izx/i_want_to_kill_someone_i_need_help/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5j1izx/i_want_to_kill_... "I just killed someone for the first time! I'm so excited!" https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5n8y13/i_just_killed_someone_for_the_first_time_im_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5n8y13/i_just_killed_s...
reaperducer 6y ago
The problem is most people don't think like that Does it matter if "most" people don't? Why should intellectual curiosity lead to a criminal investigation. There have been plenty of times I've seen a term on the internet or heard one in a movie that I wasn't familiar with, and upon doing a search learned that it was unsavory. All this does is scare people into not thinking beyond what they already know.
- triyambakam 6y ago
  Sorry but you're missing the point. What your parent poster is saying is that because most people don't care, there won't be any pressure to make this practice illegal. So I think you both agree that it is not good, but just explaining why they said most people don't care.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  "All this does is scare people into not thinking beyond what they already know. " Doesn't even do that, because if they don't know about it, they won't know not to search for it.
coding123 6y ago
Something else that no one has touched on is the asshole dilemma. Something that cops already deal with - sometimes there are just assholes that piss off a lot of people. And because of those assholes there ends up being a lot of people searching for them. Trying to find where they live so they can throw eggs at their car or whatever. Most people don't actually throw eggs at said car. But hey, this person is pissing off a lot of people, what are the chances that someone does actually murder them? Well, higher than non-assholes. And now you have a murder investigation that may include adding suspects that just fucking hate the guy, but had in no way murdered them. But Google Searching for their address the day before may tell the cops opportunity, and motive isn't hard to get shortly after. That kind of association is what cops will take to court and likely wrongly convict someone on.
TeeMassive 6y ago
Which is why the "but Free Speech doesn't protect you from consequences" attitude needs to stop.
sk2020 6y ago
Google effectively sells exactly this kind of information to commercial clients openly. That bothers me more than the information being used by police for public safety. Both are bad, but that I can directly market my snake oil to a 90 year old granny with dementia to loot her paltry social security check courtesy of Alphabet seems worse.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
emodendroket 6y ago
I've long ago assumed anything I type into a Web site text box could _potentially_ be pulled out of context and used against me in court. Constricting to have that voice in your head but that's just the reality.
sobani 6y ago
Wasn't there that time right after the Boston bombings where different members of a family had searched for things like 'pressure cooker' and 'backpack' and then got an FBI visit on terrorism suspicions?

macspoofing 6y ago

>The problem is most people don't think like that. But what is the problem here anyway? If there's a crime at a location, police detectives will investigate anyone that has any connection to that location. That someone may have searched for that location is certainly relevant to the investigation, but it doesn't imply that those individuals are automatically a suspect. In fact, they will be quickly ruled out.

candiodari 6y ago
Mostly there are zero suspects. These subpoenas are, as you point out, ways to find more suspects. There's just one issue: they also often only turn up ONE suspect. And here's the thing with people and police: everybody lies. The victim of the crime lies. Suspects lie (but the thing is: suspects lie whether or not they've committed a crime, this is not a difference between innocent and guilty). Witnesses lie (don't want to get caught, and yes the police encourages this, at wrong parking. Police will encourage them to lie, because they can't ignore a confession of wrongful parking and they understand they'll lose cooperation if they write them a ticket for their trouble). And of course the police officers themselves lie. Whatever hope you have of finding the underlying truth in such a haystack less than a few years of work ... forget it. And then comes Google with "concrete evidence". Something that is actually true. Very likely not related to the crime, but true. So you can probably understand that this would introduce quite a big bias against a "suspect", when their real connection to the crime is "someone was shot, and this guy googled 'gun' 2 days before". Furthermore, this gives them something to put to a judge or a jury, when before they had nothing, or nothing coherent. Do you really think at this point a police officer, judged by the number of cases solved, bad guys put away, just walks away without at least applying very strong pressure on whoever was fingered ?
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Police have no obligation to prosecute a wrongful parking confession.
  - candiodari 6y ago
    Police have an obligation (and so does everyone else) to report any crime they're aware of. But the same goes stronger for police officers: they cannot have a court document (like a witness statement) they know of that contains crimes and then not report those. Any such document kills the "I didn't know" defense. And parking violations are crimes. If they have a DA that doesn't like them ... So yes they do. In theory they risk their job if they don't. Now I'm not stupid. No precinct commissioner will fire an agent for this. However they will strongly discourage making a habit out of that. And if there is even a slight appearance that they're neglecting to report it because they're friends or family of the "perpetrators", then it becomes a LOT more serious. The same goes for private individuals by the way, except your job is safe (unless it requires strict no convictions, like healthcare positions). However, this is still one of the reasons for you tell the police "I don't know. I haven't seen a thing", because if you had seen it, didn't report it of your own accord and they don't like you, you'll be paying a fine.
idrios 6y ago
Exactly everything candiodari said. The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. The more information you have about a person, the more you can present to a jury selective facts about them that make them look guilty. And with enough circumstantial evidence you could make quite a lot of innocent people look guilty, despite having no causal evidence whatsoever. Google is providing circumstantial evidence, not causal.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > The police are under immense pressure to put somebody away or else they're basically telling the public "we have no idea who did this crime". They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. they don't even have to put the person away necessarily. an important metric used to evaluate police departments is the clearance rate, which is just the fraction of crimes where they found someone to charge. whether or not the charges stick or get thrown out entirely does not affect this number, and would more typically be used to evaluate the state/district attorney's office. so really all the police need to look good is to collect the bare minimum amount of evidence to charge someone in a case and then move on. if the conviction rate ends up being low or a bunch of charges get thrown out, they can just say the prosecutors are lazy/incompetent. at the same time, the prosecutors can point the finger back at the police and say they throw out so many charges because the police don't collect evidence properly. as long as they drop the weak cases, plea out the middling ones, and take a few slam-dunk cases to court, their numbers will look okay too. all the links in the chain only get examined together in the few high-profile cases that linger in the news.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >They need to find and convict a suspect to instill confidence from the public that they're doing a good job, in order to keep their jobs and their funding. This doesn't mean they need to find the actual criminal, only that they need to appear that they did. There are always instances of bad process and bad outcomes, but in general that's not how the justice system works. I'm sorry for your cynicism.

im3w1l 6y ago

Crime thriller books and movies are hugely popular. I'd say a majority of people are fascinated by crime.

goatinaboat 6y ago
I'd say a majority of people are fascinated by crime. Exactly. I’ve googled stuff after seeing it on CSI or NCIS. Or on the news, or in a movie, or whatever. You could definitely cherry-pick stuff out of my google search history to make out like I’m a big time terrorist criminal mastermind.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago

>...Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys. Exactly, the problem is the people, not the system. I'm pretty sure such nonsense would never happen in a place with strong privacy protections like Germany. But the US is an authoritarian country, so the default stance is to always give more power to law enforcement.

google234123 6y ago
Germany doesn't have warrants?
rbecker 6y ago
> I'm pretty sure such nonsense would never happen in a place with strong privacy protections like Germany. German government ministers announced plans to require companies like Facebook and YouTube to report certain forms of hate speech to the police and to provide the users’ IP addresses. Firms already have to delete such posts. -- https://apnews.com/article/ef38dbeb3c0d026e65f5dde6edeb3837 https://apnews.com/article/ef38dbeb3c0d026e65f5dde6edeb3837

candiodari 6y ago

> Enough people think like that, and there's no pressure to make this practice illegal, no pressure from the public to get laws passed because while some people look at this practice and see their lives being made worse, many people look at this and see themselves being protected from bad guys. Why do you assume this will ever be put to popular vote? I mean you see this as if it's a choice from the people in a democratic republic and then your statement might be right or wrong. But reality is: the boss of public prosecutor office realises that they need more power to get the numbers they're judged on: "bad guys" put away. Whether they're actually bad is not taken into account by the people evaluating them ... So what's this person to do? And they're not even bad people, they certainly try to get the bad guys. And, sure, being vilified in the press for going after people is undesirable, but beyond that ... and of course this leads to them pinning everything on poor (ex-)criminals who don't really have a choice, and who are judged by investigators to be "bad people". Especially in youth law this is bad. Because proof is not required to convict anyone (technically, after all, "they're not convicted", just incarcerated for years), they just catch the first "bad apple" near a crime, and if there is no crime they'll just make one up. Of course the net result is more criminals when these kids lose faith in society protecting them. People do what they're paid to do. In the case of public prosecutors and investigators that's putting people (all kinds) behind bars. Also: what does sus mean ?

blakesterz 6y ago
> So what's this person to do? Right. I dunno what they're to do. I also don't really know which side I come down on 100% of the time. Maybe this is an ok practice? It probably works to catch bad guys more often than not. But it's also likely to be abused often. I understand the arguments on both sides, and I tend to side with the privacy side rather than the other side. But I get the arguments on both sides. > Also: what does sus mean ? Suspicious. All the cool kids say "sus" now :-)

mywittyname 6y ago

Those are the type of things that I've searched for in the past. I just like knowing things.

ZeikJT 6y ago
I feel like I've searched for sketchy stuff before and it's almost always in response to something on twitter or reddit where someone claims something that feels ridiculous and so I go on google to see if it's legit or not.
behringer 6y ago
Call me crazy, but I think this is exactly how warrants should be done. Very specific in both time and place, and used to catch a criminal that did a very severe crime. If you had been caught up, you 100 percent should have been scrutinized. Imagine if it was someone you loved a witness to a terrible crime and her car was set on fire. You'd definitely want the police to prove who it was.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I'd want worse than just having the police find the guy. That's one of the major purposes of having a centralized justice system; it protects society from our individual impulses that people who wrong us must be punished at any cost.
  - AftHurrahWinch 6y ago
    Great answer! This is what Dukakis should have said to Bush about Willie Horton.
- ksk 6y ago
  Google as a private corporation should not be collecting evidence for the police before a crime as occurred. Spying and surveillance of the general public should never be accepted as the norm.
  - 6y ago

treis 6y ago

>And they'll say "See, see! This works, this should be legal it catches bad people, look at what this guy was doing" You lost me here. Of course people are going to conclude that arresting a person that set fire to a car in order to intimidate a witness in a sexual abuse case is a good thing. And why shouldn't they? That sounds like a slam dunk good thing for society.

saalweachter 6y ago
This is, actually, an anti-feature for some people. People don't like things they don't like to be effective, because they'd like to be able to argue on that basis as well. "We shouldn't torture people because it is cruel and a violation of their human rights" is a purely moral argument; "We shouldn't torture people because it is cruel and a violation of their human rights, and it isn't even effective at extracting useful information or true confessions, study after study has shown blah blah blah" is a moral argument with an effectiveness chaser thrown in. Even if you don't share the same moral framework as me, I can still possibly persuade you to act in a way I see as moral because acting immorally doesn't gain you anything but wanton cruelty. People love to do this for all sorts of arguments, from taxes to environmental or fiscal policies to their monopoly house rules. Granted, most of the time people also just pull their effectiveness claims out of their ass, but it is a very effective rhetorical technique.
rmtech 6y ago
> That sounds like a slam dunk good thing for society. That particular application is a good thing. But the existence of such capabilities can be a net negative, and by a huge margin. Crime is something like a "cost of doing business" of a free society. Take all the crime away with an all-seeing Eye of Sauron and you risk a technological dictatorship that opens death camps for the currently unpopular race/class and crushes all resistance.
- treis 6y ago
  >But the existence of such capabilities can be a net negative And that's the problem with the pro-privacy side. Their argument relies on the idea that it can be a net negative but provides little evidence that it is a net negative. They argue theoretic harm against actual real world benefit. When that's not a winning argument they lament the existence of the real world benefit instead of re-evaluating their position.

fsflover 6y ago

> Most people think "why do I care, I search google for sourdough recipes and to see what the heck sus means. The chances of me getting in trouble because I did this is really low." Even though many people think like that, there is also this: https://www.socialcooling.com/ https://www.socialcooling.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363).

shadowgovt 6y ago
Unfortunately, socialcooling describes a lot of "hey maybe" and "what if" scenarios without a lot of concrete evidence, while on the other side of the debate, there's a likely arsonist under arrest.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
TeeMassive 6y ago
This website is the kind of stuff we need to convince people about why privacy is very important. "You may not get that dream job if your data suggests you're not a very positive person." Ever since I had access to the Internet to downl- I mean stream songs, I was always afraid of people finding out what I was listening to and corporations building a psychological profile based on what I listen. Oh you listen to some Japanese songs, hmm could mean he's into hentai porn, could be a liability. Death metal? Oh repressed emotions, possibly suicide, not good long term. Rap music? Criminal. Now this doesn't seem so far-stretched but with more facets of daily life being affected. The worse that could happen is them monitoring the life of the people who will grow up to become our future politicians, if it's not already taking place considering that most of most politicians lives is much more private compared to other people.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  It seems like this only has an effect because people care about it for unexplained reason. If I wanted positive person to work with, wouldn't someone posing as one but in reality being negative, be effectively cheating?

SN76477 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Cyberpunk

syshum 6y ago

While everything you said is true, the constitution is suppose to be what protects the individual from this kind of mob thinking. General Warrants have been unconstitutional since the founding of this nation, only through some very bad "3rd party rule" exemptions to many constitutional amendments is this even thought about as acceptable.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
3rd Party Doctrine is unconstitutional but it's got nothing to do with cases where there is a warrant. warrant overrides expectations of privacy. Searching a computer database for activity directly matching a crime's attributes is not a general warrant.

vinbreau 6y ago

I worked in a bookstore in the '90s and there was a fantastic series of books, for authors, about how poisons worked, how it is like to die in certain situations, all kinds of dark stuff that was designed to help Crime Fiction writers help in areas they normally would not know enough about. Now imagine looking that stuff up on the internet for writing a book.

michaelmrose 6y ago

I have googled "machine gun", "witness intimidation", and "countries that don't have extradition with the united states" I have no plans to shoot anyone, intimidate witnesses, or flee the united states.

bussierem 6y ago
You sound like you might run a lot of Shadowrun games. I've run tabletop Shadowrun games, and I've never had a weirder search history than when those games are going. "Hm the players are going into the bank and need to stop some bad guys, I need a map quick" Google -> "<my bank> blueprint" "Crap they want me to describe the gun the guy has but the book has no picture" Google -> "<gun name>" etc. etc.
chrismarlow9 6y ago
I googled "how to make chlorine gas" after a friend mixed ammonia and bleach products thinking it would keep their dog from peeing in the same spot, and wondering why their eyes and skin were on fire.
chmod775 6y ago
This reminds me of "/r/eve is leaking". Examples: "How do I sell a hanger full of corpses?" https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5hepn4/how_do_i_sell_a_hanger_full_of_corpses/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5hepn4/how_do_i_sell_a...? "Does anyone know if drug production is a good source of income?" https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5g8dxc/does_anyone_know_if_drug_production_is_a_good/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5g8dxc/does_anyone_kno... "I want to kill someone, I need help." https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5j1izx/i_want_to_kill_someone_i_need_help/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5j1izx/i_want_to_kill_... "I just killed someone for the first time! I'm so excited!" https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5n8y13/i_just_killed_someone_for_the_first_time_im_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/5n8y13/i_just_killed_s...

reaperducer 6y ago

The problem is most people don't think like that Does it matter if "most" people don't? Why should intellectual curiosity lead to a criminal investigation. There have been plenty of times I've seen a term on the internet or heard one in a movie that I wasn't familiar with, and upon doing a search learned that it was unsavory. All this does is scare people into not thinking beyond what they already know.

triyambakam 6y ago
Sorry but you're missing the point. What your parent poster is saying is that because most people don't care, there won't be any pressure to make this practice illegal. So I think you both agree that it is not good, but just explaining why they said most people don't care.
bilbo0s 6y ago
"All this does is scare people into not thinking beyond what they already know. " Doesn't even do that, because if they don't know about it, they won't know not to search for it.

coding123 6y ago

Something else that no one has touched on is the asshole dilemma. Something that cops already deal with - sometimes there are just assholes that piss off a lot of people. And because of those assholes there ends up being a lot of people searching for them. Trying to find where they live so they can throw eggs at their car or whatever. Most people don't actually throw eggs at said car. But hey, this person is pissing off a lot of people, what are the chances that someone does actually murder them? Well, higher than non-assholes. And now you have a murder investigation that may include adding suspects that just fucking hate the guy, but had in no way murdered them. But Google Searching for their address the day before may tell the cops opportunity, and motive isn't hard to get shortly after. That kind of association is what cops will take to court and likely wrongly convict someone on.

TeeMassive 6y ago

Which is why the "but Free Speech doesn't protect you from consequences" attitude needs to stop.

sk2020 6y ago

Google effectively sells exactly this kind of information to commercial clients openly. That bothers me more than the information being used by police for public safety. Both are bad, but that I can directly market my snake oil to a 90 year old granny with dementia to loot her paltry social security check courtesy of Alphabet seems worse.

deleted 6y ago
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emodendroket 6y ago

I've long ago assumed anything I type into a Web site text box could _potentially_ be pulled out of context and used against me in court. Constricting to have that voice in your head but that's just the reality.

sobani 6y ago

Wasn't there that time right after the Boston bombings where different members of a family had searched for things like 'pressure cooker' and 'backpack' and then got an FBI visit on terrorism suspicions?