Don’t search for anything suspicious (especially at work)

A couple of years ago, a story on how a series of Google searches led to a visit by local authorities made the rounds. As Jared Newman reported for Time, searches by different members of a New York family for terms including “backpack” and “pressure cooker bomb” triggered a visit by local authorities when the suspicious Google searches were reported by an employer. Michele Catalano, the matriarch of the family in question, later wrote, “I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in ‘these times’ now.” She continued, “And in these times, when things like the Boston bombing happen, you spend a lot of time on the Internet reading about it and, if you are my exceedingly curious, news junkie 20-year-old son, you click a lot of links when you read the myriad of stories. You might just read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the Internet and you will in all probability, if you are that kid, click the link provided.”

The lesson learned? Don’t search for suspicious terms, or anything that could be construed as crime-related, when someone is watching your browsing history. (The safest course of action is to assume that someone always is.) On a similar note, it’s a bad idea to search anything crime-related if you have something to hide. Obviously we don’t condone committing a crime. But it’s worth noting that people’s Google searches have been used to convict them of crimes, especially when they just so happen to Google the crime right before or after they’ve committed it. See this Palo Alto case as an example, or read Lee Rowland’s report on how a New York case highlights the problem with finding someone guilty of a conspiracy or an attempt to commit a crime when the only evidence is words shared online. “It’s one thing to use a Google search as evidence of intent or knowledge, when an actual crime has resulted and there’s a real victim.”