By: Andrew Ciulla
Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, used to respond to users’ queries on where to hide a dead body with locations of swamps, reservoirs, metal foundries and dumps. These responses given by Siri were meant to be in jest. However, in 2012, a Florida man was found guilty of murdering his roommate, evidenced by the exact responses Siri gave to countless other users. As a result, asking Siri the same question today will produce only a dismissive response: “Very funny.” Yet, investigations revealing users’ searches have not deterred others from incriminating themselves with what they had asked the internet.
Most recently, prosecutors in Quincy, MA, have accused Brian Walshe of murdering his wife using his Google searches as evidence against him. Brian allegedly googled twenty-one similar phrases to Siri’s body disposal joke in the hours and days after Ana Walshe was last seen. The numerous searches were more graphic and disturbing than the already alarming line of questioning (warning that the content to come may be disturbing). Brian’s Google searches present a story in themselves: “How long before a body starts to smell?”; “Hacksaw best tool to dismember”; “Can identification be made on partial remains?”; “How to clean blood from wooden floor”; “Can you be charged with murder without a body?” Before Ana’s disappearance, Brian is said to have also googled, “what’s the best state to divorce for a man?” Within the searches, Brian has seemingly laid out his wife’s tragic end and given prosecutors a motive for why he did it.
Digital evidence raises questions about how long our information stays accessible even if you delete your history. Kevin Powers, a Boston College professor and cybersecurity expert, in an interview with Boston 25 News, told audiences that what you put out on the internet can stick around for a while. Powers claims that even when you delete your search history, Google can hold onto your information for up to 6 months. Google’s privacy policies state that legal requirements oblige the company to retain certain information for an extended period of time. On the other side, your data can be stored for much longer without deleting your account. For example, advertising data gets automatically deleted in two steps. After the first nine months, Google removes part of the IP address, and only after eighteen months will they delete cookies associated with the advertisement. Similarly, Google holds onto location and search data for eighteen months before it is automatically deleted.
In Brian Walshe’s case, authorities could not simply request this information from Google. Following the Court’s reasoning in Riley v. California, there are no exemptions to warrant requirements when the search is of digital data. They must first have received a warrant for their house, then a warrant for the son’s iPad, which Brian used to conduct his searches, and finally a warrant to search the Google account itself. For the police to get a warrant, they must have a reasonable belief that a crime had been committed, under the totality of the circumstances, to meet the threshold of probable cause. In theory, probable cause would bar the government from intruding into everyday citizens’ data that they believe have not committed any crimes.
Therefore, it may come as a surprise that police are retroactively searching sites like Google and Bing for keywords with specific terms from a set period of time. These practices do not target a particular suspect, but appear more like general warrants against all account users. After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, privacy advocates expressed concern over whether authorities can ask Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) to hand over people searching for Planned Parenthood in a particular area. In searching for potential violations of the law, the police are intruding on the thoughts, concerns, questions, and fears of people who have not committed any crimes. The Supreme Court should take it upon itself to uphold the 4th Amendment in online data searches, or it will become meaningless in our ever-evolving modern age.
In conclusion, our online data is far from under our exclusive control. Even without committing any crime as gruesome as what Brian Walshe has been accused of, our internet searches are private only to the discretion of the police. While researching this blog, I wonder whether I should ask Siri the age-old question. I hesitated and ultimately declined to do so because the reality is that our online inquiries can lead to unwarranted government intrusion. As a rule of thumb, anything you put on the internet should be done with the assumption that someone, somewhere, may review it someday with prejudice.
Student Bio: Andrew Ciulla is a 2L at Suffolk University Law School. He is a staff writer on the Journal of High Technology Law. Andrew received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in International Studies, with concentrations in Ethics and Social Justice, from Boston College.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
