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A comment on Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge says yes. Parent comment

Re:Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge ... by noobiemcfoob on Thursday March 16, 2017 @01:46PM (#13887135)
Right. They're fishing because they need leads. It's not a complaint about the police doing their job, but that the method in which it is being done automatically casts suspicion on the people found. Investigators feel clever for thinking "No one but the perp, within reason, could've ever searched for these terms in this time." But that just begs the question.

Because the natural consequence of this "experiment" is to cast all subjects in doubt, you must have a methodology that actually selects for the criminal instead of just correlating really strongly. It's the same problem as the social sciences. Except this one comes with legal consequences.

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Re:Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge ... by euyyn on Thursday March 16, 2017 @03:52PM (#13888553)
> Investigators feel clever for thinking "No one but the perp, within reason, could've ever searched for these terms in this time."

Luckily, people are convicted when a judge or jury is convinced that the evidence points at them being guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. Not when an investigator feels clever.

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Re:Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge ... by rhizome on Thursday March 16, 2017 @05:18PM (#13889271)
~95% of all convictions derive from plea bargains, and a not-insignificant portion (2-8%) of those are estimated to be innocent.[1]

So, we have a system where an investigator can indeed "feel clever," produce a defendant based on sketchy evidence, who then pleads out for any number of reasons. Neither judge nor jury ever hears what the evidence is in these cases. Ta da: the immaculate conviction.

1. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/26/plea-bargainin...

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Re:Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge ... by paulddraper on Thursday March 16, 2017 @06:56PM (#13889912)
And this is a problem that go away with less evidence collection?
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Re:Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge ... by rhizome on Friday March 17, 2017 @02:38AM (#13892020)
No, I'm saying that the plea system is the constant. The amount of evidence collected is often irrelevant.
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Re:Police ask for whole city's Google searches, and a judge ... by noobiemcfoob on Thursday March 16, 2017 @04:32PM (#13888897)
If only.
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