Deleting Your Browser History Could Land You In Court

No, lying to the police multiple times to keep his involvement with the bombers is what got him jail time. The police just maximized the amount of things they could charge him with. The police have always done this. I remember a old friend who got a DUI underage once. They charged him with that, and endangering a minor (himself) In his case the endangering charge was eventually dropped but do you know how many people would be upset that he didn't get any time, even if he really did have nothing to do with it?
 
Ducman69 said:
To me what matters is the order of events.

If the court asks for XYZ, and then AFTER they ask for it you delete it... hell yeah, they should throw the book at you. But if they ask for XYZ, but you already deleted it months ago, then its a non-issue.
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That is correct. Most of my cookies have to be white listed every time I open my browser...fewer still can run javascript without a temporary white listing.
 
That's not unusual. Spoliation of Evidence rules, whether it's on printed paper, handwritten notes, email, etc covers pretty much everything. It's best not to willingly violate it, unless you like jail.
 
jpm100 said:
Doesn't the Windows UEFI requirement pretty much make that a huge PITA.
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No it does not. A lot of the fear was way overblown or people complaining that has no idea how UEFI works. Unless you are using a very old version of Linux you don't really have to change much of anything.
 
I recall in one of my previous jobs, the company would up on the wrong side of some judgements, based off the contents of employee e-mail that had been retained for a long period of time. Of course the corporate response was to put a policy in place that made it a fireable offense if you kept e-mail in printed or electronic form beyond a specific date. They went so far as to modify the corporate e-mail servers to auto-delete correspondence as it reached a certain age. So much for retaining e-mail that you might need to refer back to..

I'm sure that's the nonsense this was INTENDED to put a stop to, but like anything else it's being twisted and abused.
 
Section 802(a) of the SOX, 18 U.S.C. § 1519 states:

“ Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. ”

If the person has no knowledge of an investigation or has no reason to believe he/she is under investigation, thus the clean install, defrag, system cleanup, etc. Then they are in the clear because there was no intent to impede, obstruct or influence upon deleting the data.
 
Ducman69 said:
To me what matters is the order of events.

If the court asks for XYZ, and then AFTER they ask for it you delete it... hell yeah, they should throw the book at you. But if they ask for XYZ, but you already deleted it months ago, then its a non-issue.
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This. I don't understand why..oh wait, rabble-rousing, everything the government does is bad, yell, scream, etc.

It's against the law to destroy evidence if you were served proper notice to preserve it. End of story. Kernell may have a case, since it appears he wasn't properly served. Still, his actions afterward don't exactly look clean (uninstalling, defragmenting, etc.) Don't think you can be convicted for that alone, though.
 
If deleting browser history can land you in court.. what about deleting classified emails that are on a self hosted, top secret server, created to avoid FOIA requests?
 
jpm100 said:
Doesn't the Windows UEFI requirement pretty much make that a huge PITA.
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You can boot any machine with a Linux USB flash drive. You can even delete anything on Windows partitions, so much for Windows security.
 
Phoenix333 said:
5th Amendment should cover this.
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It wouldn't it's considered physical evidence 5th amendment would prevent them from forcing you to tell them a lock combo but it wouldn't protect you from them cracking a safe open to gets what's inside. 5th amendment wouldn't protect you from handing over a key to a safe as well as the key is a physical object a court can subpoena known objects that would include your computer to which the data is stored, they'd subpoena the computer specifying the suspected documents/evidence on the computer. If you delete that after the subpoena it would be destruction of evidence.

That being said he went to police and lied in a federal investigation went home then deleted the browser history that would count as obstruction of justice knowing that it could be evidence. Else anyone/company under investigation would just destroy all evidence then claim they did nothing as then all that's left is in their head and that's 5th amendment. The law in question is a poorly written anti-cover up law, essentially if you know it could be evidence destroying it upon suspicion of investigation would break it. The problem with it is that incautious actions can be mixed in.
 
magnetik said:
If deleting browser history can land you in court.. what about deleting classified emails that are on a self hosted, top secret server, created to avoid FOIA requests?
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If you work for the government you can do anything you want to protect "the government" but if you are a private citizen look out.
 
My browser's cache is on the RAM drive. They better not shut my system down when they seize it. :p
 
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