Google Searches can, and will, be held against you
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Arguably Google's quick answer box contributed to people searching this way, though I'm sure it was a two way street of people searching that way leading to people expecting real answers to this type of query - Google would have simply responded to user expectations.
Either way, DDG and Bing likely wouldn't have fared better, and I doubt you'd get very far with Tor before hitting endless Captchas - meaning generic (or at least less immediately incriminating) searches are the only realistic solution in the near future.
Or is it okay to inexplicably twist that into a crime somehow because it's used to persecute the "right" people in this instance?
Nice of you to ignore all other searches and focus on that one thing.
This aspect of law and criminality isn't new at all. "What, so a guy can't just meet his buddies at a nice Italian restaurant anymore?"
Direct evidence is evidence that directly links a person to a crime, such as testimony from someone who witnessed the defendant committing the crime or a video showing the defendant committing the crime.
Anything else is circumstantial evidence. Fingerprints? Circumstantial. DNA match? Circumstantial.
Most criminal convictions are based entirely on circumstantial evidence.
for example a search for -lethal chainsaw injury; followed by purchase of chainsaw and safety gear, is different than purchase of chainsaw, tarps, 5gal bleach, and a pack of smokes
And in that context he's not wrong at all. For all the privacy and identity obfuscation tools we have, the Internet is one big paper trail where you should assume that someone is auditing everything you do, legally or illegally. There are too many computers in the loop serving your requests and responses for it to be reasonable to assume otherwise.
I in fact searched for "chloroform" because I wanted to read the Wikipedia page. Imagine I'm accused of a crime I _didn't_ commit, and my Google searches p-hack into a pattern. This hypothetical recalls the excellent "Don't talk to the police": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
It takes more than that to get a warrant and 'p-hack' is doing a lot of lifting as well. Far more intrusive evidence than your google searches can be gathered about you with a warrant.
Both 'it's bad that a giant digital dossier is constantly being collected about us by private parties you have little influence over' and 'it's harder to do crimes' can be true without it meaning 'the man is going to jail you for your bad taste in anime'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
(this is missing a key case, a 6th Cir. opinion, not SCOTUS sadly, but concerns emails being intercepted... I will update Wikipedia as soon as I can remember the cite)
If your search for “chloroform” is the only evidence against you then you’ll probably have a decent chance to beat the flimsy case.
If your search for “chloroform” is accompanied by the purchase of ingredients to make chloroform, posession of a bunch of rags that smell like choloroform, etc., then your chances look less rosy.
If somebody powerful enough wants to put a political dissident in jail (or worse), they’ll make it happen.
I wonder if that's actually something you can require Google to pull as a defendant in a criminal case?
>A list of Brian Walshe’s Google searches, according to prosecutors
>Brian Walshe is accused of murdering his wife, Ana Walshe, and dismembering her body. She was last seen Jan. 1.
"Dec. 27
“What’s the best state to divorce for a man”
Jan. 1
4:55 a.m.: “How long before a body starts to smell”
4:58 a.m.: “How to stop a body from decomposing”
5:20 a.m.: “How to embalm a body”
5:47 a.m.: “10 ways to dispose of a dead body if you really need to”
6:25 a.m.: “How long for someone to be missing to inherit”
6:34 a.m.: “Can you throw away body parts”
9:29 a.m.: “What does formaldehyde do”
9:34 a.m.: “How long does DNA last”
9:59 a.m.: “Can identification be made on partial remains”
11:34 a.m.: “Dismemberment and the best ways to dispose of a body”
11:44 a.m.: “How to clean blood from wooden floor”
11:56 a.m.: “Luminol to detect blood”
1:08 p.m.: “What happens when you put body parts in ammonia”
1:21 p.m.: “Is it better to throw crime scene clothes away or wash them “
Jan. 2
12:45 p.m.: “Hacksaw best tool to dismember”
1:10 p.m.: “Can you be charged with murder without a body”
1:14 p.m.: “Can you identify a body with broken teeth”
Jan. 3
1:02 p.m.: “What happens to hair on a dead body”
1:14 p.m.: “What is the rate of decomposition of a body found in a plastic bag compared to on a surface in the woods”
1:20 p.m.: “Can baking soda make a body smell good”"
https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2023/01/18/brian-walshe-go...
It’s like any other evidence.
..or ever be accused of overthrowing the government.
..be in proximity of anyone accused of wanting to overthrow the government.
..be victimized by a state employee with a grudge.
..etc etc.
Context, context, context.
By itself, it would just be circumstantial.
In the context of, say, camera footage of you scrambling up a wall of the capitol building, it's extremely important for establishing mens rea, to determine if you were scrabbling up that wall because you got caught up in the heat of the moment or if you had looked up "Is the US Capitol building scalable" a few days before your plane ticket to DC.
Don’t tell the librarian about your crime and they won’t rat you out.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpre...
Not to mention the fact that, well, a library kiosk is anonymous, many libraries don’t have cameras, and there is no ledger that records who walks to which bookshelf and reads which page of any given book.