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Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge

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Re: Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge

#3
Keyword warrants tend to be bad because of how broad they are. In my opinion, this was different. They used a small window of time and only used "keywords" that were the personal information of the victims. That's very different from searching for "where to get an abortion". Now they have to figure out exactly where that line is and how to define it.

Re: Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge

#6

IMO, the real underlying issue is the fact that Google has this sort of personalized info in their possession. Remember when the corporate line was that your personal data and search history was all anonymized? Clearly not true.

>Remember when the corporate line was that your personal data and search history was all anonymized? Clearly not true.

When was this ever claimed?

Re: Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge

#7

IMO, the real underlying issue is the fact that Google has this sort of personalized info in their possession. Remember when the corporate line was that your personal data and search history was all anonymized? Clearly not true.

IP addresses are not people

Re: Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge

#8
post #7

IMO, the real underlying issue is the fact that Google has this sort of personalized info in their possession. Remember when the corporate line was that your personal data and search history was all anonymized? Clearly not true.

IP addresses are not people

They are when correlated with a timestamp and logs from an ISP

Re: Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge

#10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP addresses are not people

They are when correlated with a timestamp and logs from an ISP

That may correlate to a given host, device, or customer connection, but none of those are natural persons.

Who had control of said device on that connection? Was a child using it? Remote-execution malware or a botnet? Was a criminal hacking their home WiFi?

You absolutely cannot map an IP address to a person, without additional forensic evidence that usually entails some non-technical circumstances as well.

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