You're making a lot of assumptions here though. Is wire fraud just an unsolvable crime? Is all crime on the internet unsolvable because the police cannot gather any evidence at all?
I agree that privacy is more important than security but I think you are going a little too far with this comment. Sure, the police should be careful with this evidence and it doesn't prove any wrongdoing but I don't see how it's unreasonable for police to ask who searched for a specific term at a specific time in a specific place.
If the police had a tap in place at that time and they caught the data in flight (good luck with that btw) then good for them. If there was no suspect this is just another fishing operation and those should be very strongly discouraged.
Note that they do not even know for sure that the suspect googled the name of the victim, they are assuming that.
And that in a case where the fraud failed, so this is not even a crime that succeeded. I think this lowers the bar for dragnet style after-the-fact fishing expeditions to the point where you might as well hand over your search history in real time just in case you commit a crime at some point in the future.
I'm sure some LE would see that as the holy grail, but me, I prefer they actually do their digging with someone specific in mind rather than to declare us all suspects to a crime simply because we happen to live in a certain city and google a certain name.
The way I read the article the police are asking for people who searched for a name that they have found is associated with pictures that were used in the attempted fraud. It sounds to me like they have done their digging and want to know who searched these terms to do further investigation.
Where do you get the proof they knew the searches took place at all? What if someone used 'Bing' or 'Scroogle' or 'DuckDuckGo' (or in a bind: Yahoo!), or already knew the person?
I don't have any proof that they know or even that they suspect they happened. Do you have proof that the police didn't make these same requests to other search engines? If this information exists it may help the police find the scammer and they don't seem to be overreaching to me.
> Do you have proof that the police didn't make these same requests to other search engines?
That would make it worse not better.
> If this information exists it may help the police find the scammer and they don't seem to be overreaching to me.
Yes, that's clear. But I'd rather they found the scammer first and then petitioned google or whoever they feel might have relevant information with a targeted request. Instead they now will use this information to generate a suspect which is the wrong way around.
Ok, that's a great point. You're concerned with the effectiveness of the evidence in a later trial. You cited a good example of how this could backfire on the police.
Having said that I am concerned with the alarmist tone this article takes and the clickbait nature of the headline. The police are not doing what the article makes it sound like they are doing. This kind of thing undermines the fair criticism of police evidence collection and a productive conversation about privacy.
It's a personal value judgment whether you think the camel's nose is a problem. The facts remain, however, since once the police get this list, they're going to ask for more search queries from the people on the list, because it's easier to create a defendant that way.
I agree that privacy is more important than security but I think you are going a little too far with this comment. Sure, the police should be careful with this evidence and it doesn't prove any wrongdoing but I don't see how it's unreasonable for police to ask who searched for a specific term at a specific time in a specific place.