The Off Topic Topic

[Valmy]

Seeing the title i assume trouple.

Circus character or someone from 'Fiddler on the Roof'?

Hippie freelove couple  (triple couple = trouple)

I thought that was a throuple.

[HVC]

Seeing the title i assume trouple.

Circus character or someone from 'Fiddler on the Roof'?

Hippie freelove couple  (triple couple = trouple)

I thought that was a throuple.

I've heard both. Trouple sounds better to me though

[Duque de Bragança]

Seeing the title i assume trouple.

Circus character or someone from 'Fiddler on the Roof'?

Hippie freelove couple  (triple couple = trouple)

I thought that was a throuple.

I've heard both. Trouple sounds better to me though

45 years qualifies for ménage à trois, I would say.   

[Tonitrus]

Pennsylvania Supreme Court allows authorities to access your search history without a warrant
News

By Kevin Okemwa published December 24, 2025
The court says that accepting Google's privacy policy waives privacy rights, allowing warrantless access to search.

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/pennsylvania-supreme-court-google-searches-are-not-private

The case doc:

https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/pa-supreme-court-kurtz-google-search-privacy.pdf

And for those not offended by a TLDR...

So when John Kurtz wanted to know the home address for K.M.—a woman that he
later kidnapped and raped—he did just that. He "Googled" it. In a subsequent
investigation into Kurtz' crimes, the Pennsylvania State Police ("PSP") obtained a search
warrant for a substantial quantity of Google's records and thoroughly examined them.
The records revealed Kurtz' Google search for K.M.'s address.
Kurtz argues that the PSP failed to establish probable cause individualized to him,
as is constitutionally required to support issuance of a search warrant. Before a person
can challenge the validity of a search warrant, he or she first must demonstrate an
expectation of privacy in the area searched. In this case, we must decide whether a person who conducts general, unprotected internet searches has an expectation of
privacy in the records generated by those searches.  We conclude that the average
search engine user—including Kurtz—does not. Accordingly, we do not reach Kurtz'
probable cause challenge, and we affirm the judgment below. 

Without a DNA match, and given K.M.'s inability to identify her assailant, the PSP's
investigation into the identity of the perpetrator was at risk of reaching a dead-end. PSP
investigators decided to look in one last place: the internet. Investigators had no
evidence that the perpetrator used a computer or Google's internet search engine to
assist him in committing his crimes, but they believed that he had researched K.M.'s name
or address beforehand. This belief arose from several factors. First, K.M.'s home was
remote, and could not be seen by those passing by on the road, which suggested that
the assault was not random. Second, the circumstances suggested that the perpetrator
was familiar with K.M. and the layout of her residence. Investigators thought that the
perpetrator might have orchestrated the crime "possibly after seeing her in the community." Third, investigators believed that, "because many sexual offenders are
predominantly fantasy driven, there was a basis to conclude that K.M.'s assailant may
have been stalking her over a period of time." Fourth, investigators surmised that,
because K.M. was attacked while her husband was at work, the assailant may have
researched her personal life and schedule.

Relying upon these deductions, PSP investigators applied for, and obtained, a
"reverse keyword search warrant" for the records that Google generated during the week
prior to the assault. The warrant was not directed at a specific person's activity, but
instead targeted all searches performed on Google's search engine for K.M.'s name or
address. Over one year later, Google informed the PSP that it had reviewed its records
and had found that someone had conducted two searches for K.M.'s address a few hours
before the attack. PSP investigators then were able to determine that the same IP
address was used for both searches, and that the IP address was associated with Kurtz'
residence.

...

The Fourth Amendment is not implicated in every governmental action that yields
evidence or information that will be used in a criminal trial. Nor does it give every person
impacted by that action the right to seek a remedy. The Amendment's protections are
triggered only when a "search" (or "seizure") occurs, which, in constitutional parlance,
refers to any state action that intrudes upon a "constitutionally protected reasonable
expectation of privacy." If the person challenging the use of the evidence does not have
a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place where the evidence was found, then
there was no "search" under the Fourth Amendment, which, in turn, means that the
contested governmental action has no constitutional significance. This is because the
Fourth Amendment "protects people, not places," and "reflects the recognition of the
Framers that certain enclaves should be free from arbitrary government interference."
Courts do not categorize Fourth Amendment places according to their physical
characteristics, but instead must determine whether a person has a legitimate expectation
of privacy in the particular "enclave" involved.

...

The third-party doctrine emerged prominently in the mid-to-late 1970s in two
United States Supreme Court decisions: United States v. Miller and Smith v.
Maryland.
In Miller, the Court held that a suspect under investigation for tax-related
crimes lacked an expectation of privacy in his bank records because a person can "assert
neither ownership nor possession" of such documents. The records that typically are
deposited with banks include checks, i.e., negotiable instruments that are disseminated
in commerce, and, thus, exposed to, the public, and account statements that contained
information that was "exposed to [bank] employees in the ordinary course of business."
Because such documents voluntarily were placed in the hands of a third party, the Court
held, a person has no expectation of privacy in them. A consumer availing himself of the
bank's services necessarily had "take[n] the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that
the information [would] be conveyed by that person to the Government."

...

The second line of decisions arose in the Court's third-party doctrine cases, Miller
and Smith. As discussed above, these cases stand generally for the proposition that a
person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information that he or she voluntarily
discloses to another person. The theory is that, once a person conveys information to
someone else, that person "assume the risk" that the information later will be turned
over to law enforcement officers.

...

The use of the internet is not involuntary, as cell phones have become. To the contrary, every time a person logs on to the internet, that person makes a choice. She chooses to input data into a network
owned and operated by an internet service provider. While users (reasonably) may
believe that their searches are private, they nonetheless willingly transmit data to a third
party whenever they type terms into a search engine and hit the "Enter" key.

[Valmy]

Jesus Christ man.

I mean fuck that rapist guy but that is some pretty blood chilling shit.

We are all going to have to choose to live in the dark ages just to avoid constant control and monitoring aren't we?

Granted even if the government couldn't do that without a warrant, everybody else can already do it so maybe it doesn't really make that much of a difference. It is always just depressing to be reminded of it.

[The Brain]

How does this situation compare to various kinds of DNA testing?

[Tonitrus]

You mean where you give your DNA to a company to find out if you are 0.06% Native American/Laplander/Swede/Irish/etc, but now the police can subpoena the company to find out if you are a match for the Zodiac killer?

[crazy canuck]

Jesus Christ man.

I mean fuck that rapist guy but that is some pretty blood chilling shit.

We are all going to have to choose to live in the dark ages just to avoid constant control and monitoring aren't we?

Granted even if the government couldn't do that without a warrant, everybody else can already do it so maybe it doesn't really make that much of a difference. It is always just depressing to be reminded of it.

I wouldn't call the time before search engines the dark ages.  I think it was preferable in many ways.

[The Brain]

You mean where you give your DNA to a company to find out if you are 0.06% Native American/Laplander/Swede/Irish/etc, but now the police can subpoena the company to find out if you are a match for the Zodiac killer?

That, and stuff where they identify relatives to you (and therefore you) even if you yourself have never submitted DNA.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I struggle to disagree with it. The entire economy of the internet is based on those companies selling that data so the idea that it's private strikes me as odd. This is tracked by search engines, by the sites you then visit, it is sold when you visit a website with advertising and broadcast often to thousands of adtech companies to do an auction.

We're not talking about decrypting messages from one person to another on an app or something like that.

To me the issue isn't that the police can access this via a warrant but that Google (or other search engines) are storing and monetising it in the first place.

[Admiral Yi]

To me the issue isn't that they can search browsing histories, it's that they can search everyone's history without probable cause.  If some other random dude had looked up the victim's address he would now be part of the investigation.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah I struggle to disagree with it. The entire economy of the internet is based on those companies selling that data so the idea that it's private strikes me as odd. This is tracked by search engines, by the sites you then visit, it is sold when you visit a website with advertising and broadcast often to thousands of adtech companies to do an auction.

We're not talking about decrypting messages from one person to another on an app or something like that.

To me the issue isn't that the police can access this via a warrant but that Google (or other search engines) are storing and monetising it in the first place.

Yes, exactly so

[Josquius]

Interesting graph showing what cut through in the news over the course of the year for the UK.


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