The police had a warrant for this information from Google. The problem isn’t what Google did, it’s that a judge signed off on a bad warrant and that the evidence obtained from it was still allowed to be used.
Comment on Google forced to reveal users' search histories in Colorado court ruling
Sentau@feddit.de 11 months agoThis is like going to a hotel and asking to see a list of people who stayed in the hotel last week because the suspect is probably staying nearby.
And the hotel can deny to provide this information if it is an informal request. Only with a warrant will they forced to give up that list and a judge issuing the order will want some proof as why the police believe the suspect stayed in a hotel.
I am not a lawyer so I could be wrong about the criteria for the issue of warrants.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sentau@feddit.de 11 months ago
My comment was in context of the comment above and not in the context of the article.
What you said is all true and is what I was trying to explain to the guy above that usually warrants need proof/probable cause to be issued.
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Right. Google could have just looked that shit up voluntarily. I mean, it can’t be a long list.
Sentau@feddit.de 11 months ago
But Google didn’t. They were forced by a warrant which was issued on grounds so weak, that judges themselves agreed that it was unconstitutional.
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 11 months ago
There was a fire and maybe people who looked up that address could be further investigated.
Do you think that’s weak grounds? How could that specific and very small list of IP addresses violate a persons privacy?
I obviously haven’t read the warrant request, and it could have been worded pretty poorly.
Sentau@feddit.de 11 months ago
Yes I think that’s weak grounds. And so do the judge who proceeded over the case as well as several other judges who deemed the warrant as unconstitutional. The only reason the evidence was allowed was because the judge declared that the justice systems broke the rules in good faith. I haven’t read the warrant request either just forming my opinion from articles on the issue.
I think that the warrant was issued on weak grounds because what the cops had was a hunch (a calculated one but still a hunch). They had no proof that the perpetrators/murderers searched for the apartment. It is not like they identified that searches for that addressed spiked at some point and served a warrant for those ip addresses. They just asked for all ip addresses in the last 15 days because they did not have evidence pointing towards a search just a calculated hunch.