To the commenters saying, "So what?" I would suggest thinking of instances other than distant political targets.
I in fact searched for "chloroform" because I wanted to read the Wikipedia page. Imagine I'm accused of a crime I _didn't_ commit, and my Google searches p-hack into a pattern. This hypothetical recalls the excellent "Don't talk to the police": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
I'm accused of a crime I _didn't_ commit, and my Google searches p-hack into a pattern.
It takes more than that to get a warrant and 'p-hack' is doing a lot of lifting as well. Far more intrusive evidence than your google searches can be gathered about you with a warrant.
Both 'it's bad that a giant digital dossier is constantly being collected about us by private parties you have little influence over' and 'it's harder to do crimes' can be true without it meaning 'the man is going to jail you for your bad taste in anime'.
I'm not sure you need a warrant? The "Third Party" doctrine in the USA still hasn't been totally over-ruled, and therefore any information you give to third parties is considered fair game via subpoena, which is vastly lower standard than a warrant.
(this is missing a key case, a 6th Cir. opinion, not SCOTUS sadly, but concerns emails being intercepted... I will update Wikipedia as soon as I can remember the cite)
These searches were obtained by serving Google with a search warrant, as it says in the charging documents from which these quotes were ragescreenshotted.
If your search for “chloroform” is the only evidence against you then you’ll probably have a decent chance to beat the flimsy case.
If your search for “chloroform” is accompanied by the purchase of ingredients to make chloroform, posession of a bunch of rags that smell like choloroform, etc., then your chances look less rosy.
If somebody powerful enough wants to put a political dissident in jail (or worse), they’ll make it happen.
If you find yourself in such a circumstance, the best evidence you could collect is probably evidence that searching for chloroform doesn't correlate with criminal activity.
I wonder if that's actually something you can require Google to pull as a defendant in a criminal case?
I in fact searched for "chloroform" because I wanted to read the Wikipedia page. Imagine I'm accused of a crime I _didn't_ commit, and my Google searches p-hack into a pattern. This hypothetical recalls the excellent "Don't talk to the police": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE