Hint: If You Commit A Crime, Do Not Google Every Aspect Of It Afterwards
from the isn't-this-obvious? dept
Techdirt has reported on a number people accused of murder googling for things like "neck snap break" or "how to commit murder" beforehand, and leaving these suggestive details on their computers. Those were some years back, and since then there has been plenty of attention given to the idea that your search histories provide a great deal of information about what you were thinking - and possibly even what you were thinking about doing.So you would expect people by now would have learned to be a little more cautious – for example, by carrying out searches anonymously at different Internet cafes. But the story of Vincent Tabak, whose case is currently going through UK courts, suggests that message still hasn't got across. The court has been hearing about his intensive use of the Internet to research a range of topics after killing a woman called Joanna Yeates (he admits manslaughter, but denies murder):
The 33-year-old defendant ... looked up satellite imagery of the site where he dumped Yeates's body. He researched the Wikipedia page for murder and maximum sentence for manslaughter, web records from work and personal laptops showed.That's a reminder of just how much detailed information about past Internet activity can be gleaned from computers, and how incriminating that might be in certain circumstances. On the other hand, perhaps we should be grateful that people committing crimes are still making it so easy to convict them on the basis of their tell-tale online activity.
While regularly checking the Avon and Somerset police website and local news site www.thisisbristol.co.uk, the Dutch engineer was also checking decomposition rates.
Days after killing Yeates at her Clifton flat on 17 December, Tabak was watching a timelapse video of a body decomposing, Bristol crown court heard.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
yeah like in the history tab of your browser on your physical computer....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WTF!?
Hopefully, I will never be hiding these kinds of searches!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: WTF!?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: WTF!?
My personal record is recovering 250GB of data on a formatted drive in under 20 hours using nothing but consumer devices. When I was doing contract work and had access to much higher-end equipment that time would have been substantially lower.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: WTF!?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
LiveCDs
I remember reading a book in the Shadowrun RPG that was a neat suggestion, for rich people. Have your computer memory (RAM, ROM, etc.) put on EPROM chips and do your work in a dark room. Replace the lights with UV lights. When someone busts down your door and turns on the lights, the UV rays automatically erase the chips and there goes any evidence of wrong-doing. :) (Impractical, but an interesting thought.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
satellite imagery eh?
I can't tell you how many people I've see who think that Google Maps is realtime
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If you heard of a murder what would you do?
Would you look up the location of that murder on Google maps?
I know I did it a couple of times.
If you were accused of anything would you not look up what could happen to you?
I saw a lot of people googling about copyright infringement and what it means.
This is not to say the guy is not guilty at this point I really don't know and it may be fun to accuse him of wrong doing, but one hopes that the evidence against him is a lot more stronger than just internet searches.
I have searched for decomposing bodies, murders and stories about murders, graphic photographs and more, I hope that can't be used alone to convict me of anything.
Using real crime stories as templates for other stories also are not a bad idea.
You get a name.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/index.html
Then find the database where you can probably find more info about that case.
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/is/ncic.htm (FBI crime database)
And read about it. Great source for inspiration, I once found the story of a guy who build a house that was full of secret rooms and he brought in a lot of people over the years people only discovered that he was killing people after he died and they found hundreds of remains inside the house walls. I like horror stories and I could picture a creature killing people in their houses coming out at night from the walls after reading that piece of history.
I also searched for a lot of weird things like medical images about diseases because I wanted to make 3D models of them and see how they looked like, could anyone say that I am fascinated with death? probably, but does it mean I would kill anybody? I want to believe it is outside of that possibility personally I go to extremes to evade a confrontation, but others can't see that or feel and so what they see is strange and could be viewed as dangerous but is it?
On the funny side this is what happens when people get overboard with laws.
Crazy mayor(Vilnius - Lithuania) uses APC to crush illegal parked cars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ-8xj8CUZw
http://www.dumbcriminals.com/
Again, I don't know if the guy is guilty or not, just that all that alleged evidence can have more simple explanations and that alone should not be viewed as prove of any wrong doing alone, it needs more than just that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
He's admitted to killing her, just not murdering her, this evidence is being used as firstly a sign of mental awareness (so he cannot try the diminished responsibility on mental health grounds), it also is being used to show how calculating and calm he was after killing the woman in researching different ways to dispose of/decompose the body, to either speed up or slow down decomposition to a degree that the foresic teams cannot accurately pinpoint a time/date of death.
Also, these searches were made after the killing, but it had only been released to the press as missing person.
The fact that he's admitted to killing her has thrown more weight behind this evidence, it's circumstantial, sure, and not enough to convict alone, but it's another nail in the defenses case.
Incidently, he has said he killed her by placing his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming at his 'misinterpretation' of inviting her neighbour for a cup of coffee, he tried to kiss her and she screamed, he shut her up. Plausable but sadly for him, the cause of death was strangulation, not just suffocation. Another nail.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The DNA evidence probably helps, it's what forced his hand in admitting to manslaughter.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Or you know...
Or you know, not commit murder.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whatever
La, la, la
Use a proxy
La, la, la
Cleaning programs
La, la, la
Gonna do it tonight? Tonight? Store nothing, no, nothing on your hard drive. Tonight, tonight, use removable media and have a place to hide it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And yet two more cases for the "Dumb Criminals" file...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
anonymous -- really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]