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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

If you add all those records together you get a fraction of the information you get from someone's Google history. We're talking records like search history, live GPS data and emails. That is a completely different level of scrutiny.

So the difference is seeing something through a window with curtains vs. having a camera installed in the room. In principle, not so different. In practice there really is no comparison. It is basically a warrant to ruffle through someone's life.

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It is basically a warrant to ruffle through someone's life

Which, for what it's worth, is a warrant that is perfectly within the powers of a judge to grant.

It needs to be phrased more specifically, or it will violate the prohibition on general warrants.

"You went 61 in a 60. Here's a ticket. Also, because you broke the law once and I'm in a pedantic mood, I'm issuing a warrant to go through all of your GPS history for the past two years. Oh look, 1 year ago you went 36 in a 35. Another ticket for you. 2 years ago you jaywalked. Another ticket."

At what point do we want the legal system to no longer have the power to scrutinize an individual's history?

I don't believe that a warrant to "ruffle through someone's life" without limits is within the powers of a judge. A warrant to procure relevant evidence to a case being investigated, legally, certainly.

Issuing an order for someone's entire Google history for a year is bordering "an unreasonable search and seizure", by my understanding. Do they have legitimate reason to believe that there is an email containing evidence? Or a document in Google drive? Location data for an entire year - how is this relevant to the case?

It’s not the same thing. He is suing the city of Chicago for “malicious prosecution”. As part of that lawsuit, the city must attempt to show that the prosecution was not malicious.

That’s different than stating that you would like to browse through someone’s history for the purpose of finding crimes where they may not exist.

What? They're collecting evidence post facto to argue whether the previous prosecution was malicious or not?

He's being sued by the city for the costs of the hate crime investigation.

He's counter-suing for malicious prosecution.

Can't wait for an AI that does that after a subpoena. Given these terabytes of personal data, find all infractions. Palantir working on it? </sarcasm>

Also imagine just how much more power law firms on the plaintiff side would have if they want to find something wrong with the defendant's profile. Which, if there is power misuse, like in current society, is bad.

Extrapolating completely outside of the scope of the current case being discussed is not very helpful.

>>is a warrant that is perfectly within the powers of a judge to grant.

Not under the 4th amendment of the US Consitution they don't, they have the power to grant a warrant for a Specific thing to be searched pursuant to probable cause a specific crime has been committed

General Search warrants are and should remain unconstitutional

"If you add all those records together you get a fraction of the information you get from someone's Google history."

With 'Google Home' etc. it changes everything. Door locks, home cameras, audio recordings etc. etc..

Can the argument you had with your wife, totally irrelevant to the case, wherein you got angry and called her a big 'B' be used against you in court as demonstration of your character?

The time is now to be concerned about 'police state'. I think we can mostly have our cake and eat it too. Proportionality matters on all sides.

I met with someone from a privacy focused search engine and a line from his deck stuck with me: “you tell your search engine things you wouldn’t tell your friends or spouse”

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