While we can argue about whether the Commander-in-Chief (you know, the guy who is empowered to overturn verdicts and pardon death-row criminals) is allowed to authorize access to your phone records, hopefully there is no disagreement over whether the police can simply use web search engines to help find criminal behaviour.
I’m talking run-of-the-mill web-surfing. That’s what Maryland fire inspectors did to crack a case of 17 fires over the past 4 months.
And today’s winners of the coveted ‘what-the-heck-was-I-thinking’ award are the two teenaged arsonists who bragged about their exploits, complete with photos, to their friends on MySpace.com.
I’m waiting for their lawyer to file suit for unreasonable search. After all, it’s called MySpace, not OurSpace.
Safety tip, kids: the internet is a pretty wide open public space. When bragging about arson, shop-lifting or whatever helps pick up dates these days, you may want to try some other approach.