I am conflicted on how I feel about that. Obviously information dragonets are bad because they're specifically designed to produce false positives. In this case, however, they produced a definite positive that wouldn't have been achieved otherwise.
Edit:
The good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule provides that “evidence
obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment should not be suppressed in
circumstances where the evidence was obtained by officers acting in objectively
reasonable reliance on a warrant issued by a detached and neutral magistrate, even
if that warrant was later determined to be invalid.” Gutierrez, 222 P.3d at 941; see
also Leftwich, 869 P.2d at 1272 (holding that Colorado’s good-faith exception,
35
codified in section 16-3-308, C.R.S. (2023), is “substantially similar” to the Supreme
Court’s rule). The exception exists because there is little chance suppression will
deter police misconduct in cases where the police didn’t know their conduct was
illegal in the first place. Leon, 468 U.S. at 918–19. In such cases, “the social costs of
suppression would outweigh any possible deterrent effect.
But the good-faith analysis in Gutierrez is distinguishable. True, we held
there that the good-faith exception did not apply, but we had already recognized
that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their financial records
when Gutierrez was decided. Id. at 933 (citing numerous cases and statutes
establishing that an individual’s financial records are protected under Colorado
law). So, the police were on notice that a nexus was required between a crime and
Gutierrez’s individual tax records. See id.
38
¶70 By contrast, until today, no court had established that individuals have a
constitutionally protected privacy interest in their Google search history. Cf.
Commonwealth v. Kurtz, 294 A.3d 509, 522 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2023) (holding that, under
the third-party doctrine, the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of
privacy in his search history). In the absence of precedent explicitly establishing
that an individual’s Google search history is constitutionally protected, DPD had
no reason to know that it might have needed to demonstrate a connection between
the alleged crime and Seymour’s individual Google account.
In essence, the court is saying that this is the one and only time this will be allowed in Colorado.
The obvious potential harm in general outweighs the positive outcome in a specific case. Justifying broad surveillance because it works occasionally is the road to a police state.
The entire exeption, and the broader exclusionary rule, is based around the self-evidently incorrect assumption that what happens in court will effect behaviour of investigators.
search warrant that required Google to provide the IP addresses of anyone who had searched for the address of a home within the previous 15 days of it being set on fire
I’m fine with this. It’s specific to an actual crime that happened, and not targeting a known individual or preventing something that hasn’t happened yet, “for the children” or some nonsense like that.
You’re fine with not targeting an individual and using blanket warrants instead? Even a judge said it was unconstitutional due to it not being individualized, and the EFF says it can implicate innocents. Even Google, who tracks and collects most everything, was reluctant to hand it over.
Sure, this reinvigorated the case, but it has an “ends justify the means” feel to it, which is a slippery slope. But you’re actively endorsing a less privacy friendly stance than Google, of all things. That blows my mind.
Everything must blow your mind. This 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. Sounds like a pretty good way to get leads without asking for too much info.
Figuring out who searched for the address where the crime happened actually just sounds like good police work
This 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 the hotel.
I am not a lawyer so I could be wrong about the criteria for the issue of warrants.
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.
Yes I think that’s weak grounds. And so does the judge who presided 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 system 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 during that spike. They just asked for all ip addresses in the last 15 days and that was because they did not have evidence pointing towards a search just a calculated hunch.
Edit : This precedent will have a lot of avenues for misuse. In States were abortion is banned, police can request warrants for abortion searches without the warrant specifying who specifically they are searching for and then investigate women whose ip addresses show up on the list. These will be woman whom the cops had zero evidence against, women who were not even suspects before an unconstitutional warrant like this makes them one.
This 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.
Going to the hotel and asking is fine. It’s up to the hotel to protect their guests’ privacy in such a case. It’d probably be more productive if they asked the hotel staff about particular suspicious behavior that they’d personally seen, especially if they could narrow down the time frame, though. “Did anyone smelling like smoke come through after 11 PM last night?”
But the issue wasn’t what the police did - it was what the judge did. This situation would be more like if a judge issued a warrant for such a request without any evidence linking the hotel itself to the crime.
Getting a warrant for the entire guest list would not be appropriate, though - at least, not without specific evidence linking a suspect to that specific hotel. “The crime was committed nearby” isn’t sufficient. They need evidence the suspect entered the hotel, at minimum.
Sounds like a pretty good way to get leads without asking for too much info.
Sounds like a pretty good way to trample over the privacy rights of the hotel guests who’ve done nothing wrong.
Sure. On your side, you have your opinion. On my side I have legal precedent. You’re welcome to continue having your opinion, even though it’s unfounded and you’ve been told as much.
So you don’t have a problem with the judge saying well this is illegal but since it was done with good intentions it’s fine? I mean that is such a stupid legal precedent right there the cops are now allowed to do anything as long as their intentions are good.
Just people in a privacy community advocating for even less privacy than Google, who is decidedly anti-privacy, wants. The company who detests privacy and wants to collect data on everyone said, “this might be private and we shouldn’t go with it,” and you go “nope, it’s not, give it over?” I feel like Google is a very low bar to pass for privacy, and you still tripped on it.
So yes, no matter how much I experience in the world, people advocating for being taken advantage of or having their rights violated (which is what’s happening here) blows my mind, despite running into it semi-constantly.
Yeah, it’s a specific enough request that I don’t see any problem here.
Although, why the IP address? I would imagine most people using Google products would be logged into Google accounts. They’d probably know the exact account who made the search, rather than a vague IP that could belong to multiple people in.
Fair enough. I don’t think it’s common for someone to be doing Google searches without having an account linked to other services, though.
Anyone using YouTube, Gmail, etc. would be logged in.
And everyone with an android phone who uses google search would very likely be linked to an account, for example.
I just thought it would cut to the chase for Google to provide account holder info and not just IP addresses.
Then again, the arsonists could have very well used any of the other search engines to look up the address. So… maybe police aren’t aware that other search options exist.
It wasn’t specific to an individual criminal, though. Police aren’t allowed to get warrants for fishing expeditions, they’re supposed to find leads themselves and then get a concise warrant to evidence to confirm that. They searched people they had no right to search, and violated their constitutional rights.
Yes exactly. This story has echos of the guy who was hounded by police (and maybe even charged and convicted?) because he took a different route while cycling and rode past a house where a crime was committed. That, too, was Google.
I always use Google anonymously as I always find alternative search engines to be lacking. Even without personalized search results, Google always works better for me.
I’ve been using duck duck go for a while, and I’ve got a fresh Linux install on another machine I’m using as a server and I went to look something up. I was 2 pages in, thinking “ddg isn’t great, but this is ridiculous”, and I remembered i was on Google
That headline misses the big problem. It’s not that Google was forced to give up search history data. If Google gets a warrant, they will comply. The real problem is that the justices acknowledged that the warrant was unconstitutional and permitted the evidence anyway. They claim the police “acted in good faith” while violating the constitution, which is a horrifying precedent.
If you’re thinking “alls well that ends well,” because they caught the arsonists who murdered a family of five, I can sympathize with that feeling, but consider that the murderer may have his conviction overturned on subsequent appeals.
The police obtained a warrant for everyone who searched for a thing from Google, and the search information was used against the accused in court. 14 states currently outlaw abortion, and there’s some cousin-fucking conservative prosecutor in Dipshit, Alabama, just salivating over the prospect of obtaining the IP addresses of every person looking up directions to clinics.
Not long after Dobbs, someone posted a guide on r/WitchesVsPatriarchy on how to securely find* this information without opening yourself up to potential harm. Terrifying that that’s even a thing that needs to exist.
I wonder how many companies like Cambridge analytica or TPUSA just have access to these. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some social engineering dark arts underground of pretending to be police and getting this data to study
the police acted in good faith, meaning the evidence will be allowed in court despite the warrant being legally flawed
I have no knowledge (or particular interest) in USA laws, but I guess that judges making this decision is a statement of future intent. I guess if you don’t want to be tracked then don’t use services which track you!
i mean shit i guess they can here anyway, but it’s stunning to see that written down. oh they thought they were doing the right thing? oh that’s fine then
In Colorado, until a new law overides the ruling, google must reveal your search history when subpoenaed. This doesn’t affect surrounding states or federal law until their own judges make a ruling or politicians make a law.
The issue here is not that they are required to reveal search history of suspects, the issue is that the police is browsing the search history of everyone in order to find a suspect. That’s not what warrants are for and violates the constitutional rights of nearly everyone they searched.
Opposite actually. The court decision says that all future reverse keyword search warrants in Colorado will have their evidence thrown out. This one, however, didn't have precedent so the police acted in good faith.
I agree it is people looking for reasons to criticize. However, I do think VPN or anything that modifies your route tables should be subjected to more scrutiny than other app features due to potential for abuse. I wish browsers wouldn't bundle them at all, or install them as part of their base.
Especially considering they were injecting affiliate links/replacing affiliate links with their own, everything they do should be seen through that lens. They literally thought it was either OK to do which means that behavior like this is going to happen and keep happening with them, OR they thought they could get away with it which ends up with the same result.
I’ve discovered a new browser to use as a secondary one to Firefox in case I needed a chromium based one. Thorium. This thing is insanely fast. Brave what?
Well, there's a way to frame this as malicious. I'm not a fan of Brave, but it also installs, say, a spell checker without consent, or a Tor client. Sure, the code is there even if you don't use it, but... What's the actual harm?
The harm is that it’s installed. There is no reason for doing this. It can be done on demand in one second if the user subscribes to their VPN.
It also shows once once again that they keep on doing their shady shit and still cannot be trusted (or at least that they are a bunch of incompetent developers).
Firefox also installs telemetry and data reporting functions like most browsers, also libraries like libwebp, which are prone to critical vulnerabilities (as seen), encryption systems like Encrypted Client Hello, and software like Pocket, which some users never use, but it's still there.
Any browser will install many features that probably won't be used. Saying that a browser that installs a feature like Tor or VPN (which aren't even hidden, Brave publicly present those features) is automatically bad doesn't sound reasonable to me.
The point I'm making is that it's not like Brave installed the VPN in secret, hidden away to it's own devices. The code is there and a service is installed, sure, but it's dormant until the user activates it.
I mean, yes, it could've been differently, and as I understand it they're going to. But as a user, how is your life worse with this than without this? What's the impact of something being installed but not running?
The same company that was modifying the content of the pages as an opt-out feature deeply hidden in the setting? (e.g. bitcoin stuff on every Reddit link)
Surely you trust them with all of your traffic, though? They sound like good stewards and of course you’d want their VPN installed without your consent and you can definitely trust it’s not doing anything bad, right?
Yeah, weirdly it shows up as a cross-post to the same community but not every client shows them both at once. I’ve seen it before and I think it was to do with cross-instance syncing then as well.
Will its really good but isn’t Linux mint de and especially MX is better than Debain for A few tools but i agree that they’re better than official Ubuntu and easier than vanilla arch
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