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Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Police Using Search Histories to Find Criminals
Posted by:
No Privacy
()
Date: February 23, 2026 04:02PM
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Criminal investigators hoping to develop suspects in difficult cases have been asking Google to reveal who searched for specific information online, seeking “reverse keyword” warrants that critics warn threaten the privacy of innocent people.
Unlike traditional search warrants that target a known suspect or location, keyword warrants work backward by identifying internet addresses where searches were made in a certain window of time for particular terms, such as a street address where a crime occurred or a phrase like “pipe bomb.”
It’s not a wild guess by investigators to conclude that people are using Google searches in all manner of crimes, as the company's search engine has become the main gateway to the internet and users' daily lives increasingly leave online traces. The potential value to investigators of the data Google collects is obvious in cases with no suspect, such as the search for Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper.
Unlike traditional search warrants that target a known suspect or location, keyword warrants work backward by identifying internet addresses where searches were made in a certain window of time for particular terms, such as a street address where a crime occurred or a phrase like “pipe bomb.”
It’s not a wild guess by investigators to conclude that people are using Google searches in all manner of crimes, as the company's search engine has become the main gateway to the internet and users' daily lives increasingly leave online traces. The potential value to investigators of the data Google collects is obvious in cases with no suspect, such as the search for Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper.