Judge issues search warrant for anyone who Googled a victim's name

you heard it hear first

You better not Google Barbara Streisand or you are ..... hang on, there's a knock at the site I'll be back in a minu....

but what if..

Hey have a name like Dave Gorman? There's at least 52 of them about...

I also know my own name is rare but there's at least 5 that live within 50 miles of me(one owns a fish and chip restaurant that I keep meaning to try out).

I think we should be told...

what is the name we aren't supposed to google?

if we all started googling it the judge would be busy from now 'till kingdom come.

Judge Gary Larson?

Is a judge who seems to have stolen the identity of a well-known cartoonist the best person to hear this case?

A bit of an overreach here but.....

While this is way beyond overreach for information, I am pleased the local cops are trying. Most places they just take the report of fraud, etc. and say "Oh.. the Internet.. tough." and go back to their coffee and donuts as they know it's pretty impossible... well maybe not for the NSA, FBI, CIA, et al.

Which it just hit me... why didn't they hit the NSA for this? I'm sure they have the info.

Fishing?

I don't see the problem with this.

It is a clearly defined search for a specific case.

They may not get a usable result, but it's a good start, and they (should) have the sent-from fax number.

Good on the cops for taking it on.

"Google may not cooperate, however. The internet king has an interest in fending off overreaching governments and police to avoid becoming an on-demand data dispensary."

Is that why?

I think not. Of course, handing over data all the time takes away from their business and is an unwelcome distraction. BUT, I think the main reason they want these requests to stop is that if courts can order such data to be handed over, then the only protection that people have is for Google not to have the data in the first place.

That is the only real protection against having governments and law enforcement agencies (not to mention criminals) hoovering up your data - don't have it there in the first place.

If they were serious about protecting their users and customers then they would not store anything that wasn't necessary and would anonymise everything possible.

But of course Google want to collect that data and want to make sure it is identifiable, as much as possible.

Google - really?

There are people still using plain google searches? How very last century.

startpage.com people. Or duckduckgo.com if you must.

The law is not only an ass ...

... it also traditionally has issues with keeping up with technology.

Google & other in-the-spotlight companies could use their influence to teach. They could call themselves, oh, I don't know, maybe "friends of the court"?

Bah!

Wait, what?

Didn't Gary Larson draw the surrealist satirical cartoon The Far Side?

I think I see what's going on here.

Wait! What? They have our MAC Addresses?

"name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), dates of birth, social security numbers, email addresses, payment information, account information, IP addresses, and MAC addresses of the person(s) who requested/completed the search."

And how is Google going to get my MAC address? That's either a goof up or very, very, unsettling.

Who is the victim?

From reading the story, the credit union is the victim here, not the person named on the account. They accepted instructions from someone pretending to be someone who had an account. Their processes did not verify that persons identity properly. They should have already replaced the the money back into the account and hopefully be looking at what went wrong with their processes.

Edina, Minnesota

Cheeses Christ!

Reasonable course of action

Recently there have been lots of comments about law enforcement authorities of one kind or another, often based in the USA applying extraterritoriality or just demanding information without judicial oversight.

In this instance both these issues appear not to be relevant, and the police are making a not unreasonable enquiry, but still copping some flak. In the old days if someone were to, for example, burn down a building, it would not be unreasonable for the police to enquire of the local library if someone had recently checked out "Mrs. Miggins' Guide to Arson and Animal Husbandry for Beginners". Good old fashioned police work I think it used to be called.

If this search turns up any evidence, I would be very surprised (although I am aware that the legal systems in some states can be strange to us Brits) if this lead to a conviction without at least some further proof. It might however raise a reasonable cause to make further enquiries relating to one or more people. If it turns out that the search was by the local "soup kitchen" service because the person had applied to be a volunteer, this would then hopefully be looked at, seen to be a coincidence and dismissed, allowing the police to concentrate their resources somewhere hopefully more fruitful.

As for the amount of tech info, if the link comes back to a phone which suspect X says "this is mine, no-one else uses it" this could help prove a case. if it turns out to be a shared PC in a student house left unsecured then of course its a bit trickier for the police, but again not an unreasonable request.

The trouble with the Edina police...

...everyone they arrest is a Patsy.

DYSWIDT?!??

And so slurp mission-creep begins

I'd laugh if the perp actually used Startpage or DuckDuckGo instead, and they nail this on some poor internet idiot that was too curious for his/her own good.

"Gary Larson is a former Minnesota Fourth Judicial District judge for Hennepin County, Minnesota. He was appointed to this position in 1985 and was elected to full terms in 1986, 1992, 1998 and 2004. He is currently assigned to the Criminal and Civil divisions. He retired in June of 2011."

Is a retired judge allowed to issue orders...?

"to avoid becoming an on-demand data dispensary."

Or, you know, they could stop collecting every little detail about their users (and even non-users) that they can... Can't be compelled to give information you don't have.

Edina is a close in suburb (about 4 miles from the center) of Minneapolis, a fairly large city across the Mississippi River from Saint Paul. It probably is not, as some commenters seemed to infer, a backwoods hayseed village.

The reason for the local police to ask for the warrant they did seems a bit mysterious unless they already have a suspect in mind and are after corroboration, although in that case, the generality of the search request is mysterious. The obvious target for a search warrant is not Google, but the Bank of America, which allegedly received the fraudulent transfer. BoA is legally required to know who owned the account into which the transfer was deposited and Spire Credit Union would have been in position to provide the BoA account number to which they transferred the money.

The transferring credit union would be one of the injured parties, if not the only ones. The Bank of America, which reportedly received the fraudulent transfer, is a national corporation based in a different state, and the credit union likely is nationally chartered and in any cases claims its accounts are insured by the National Credit Union Administration, an agency of the US government. The transfer, if as described, violated a variety of federal laws and the investigating agency probably should be the FBI.