Ask HN: Access to the Corpus - What Would You Do?

Re:Ask HN: Access to the Corpus - What Would You Do? by bowman on Saturday August 22, 2009 @06:38PM (#779916)

I would use it to fight crime/corruption. It isn't too hard to identify people from a few google searches. Examples:

Food places near X will give you a good indication where they live and their income Find what they are searching during normal work hours. Often this will give you where they work. Searches of themselves.

Then just use this information to hunt them down or expose them.

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Re:Ask HN: Access to the Corpus - What Would You Do? by nostrademons on Saturday August 22, 2009 @09:30PM (#780044)

Such a massive privacy violation. How would you feel if you searched for "age of consent laws" to lay the smackdown on some Reddit debate (http://xkcd.com/386/) and the Feds came knocking on your door?

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Re:Ask HN: Access to the Corpus - What Would You Do? by nico on Saturday August 22, 2009 @08:40PM (#780015)

How would you know who's a criminal?

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Re:Ask HN: Access to the Corpus - What Would You Do? by blasdel on Saturday August 22, 2009 @08:50PM (#780025)

From their searches of course!

It comes up in criminal cases all the time -- when you're googling "age of consent laws" or "how to dispose of a dead body" it's pretty easy to establish premeditation, though that doesn't help with 'pre-crime'.

The GP may have been focused on finding known fugitives on the run.

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