I mean, we know they can be used as evidence against you, but what if I was actually just chilling and watching Youtube videos at home? Can my spying piece of shit phone ironically save me? 🤔
I mean, we know they can be used as evidence against you, but what if I was actually just chilling and watching Youtube videos at home? Can my spying piece of shit phone ironically save me? 🤔
Depends on how bad the cops want to pin it on you.
If they’re on your ass hard, they’ll ignore exculpatory evidence. Since only YouTube playing isn’t concrete enough to guarantee much of anything about where you were, it’s definitely not going to satisfy them without more.
Even the phone itself being in you home the entire time isn’t definitive proof you were there.
There’s not even a guarantee you could establish reasonable doubt with every record of your phone being available, so you can’t pin your hopes on a jury either.
Hell, you could be on a call from a landline, and that isn’t sure fire proof you were at home. It’s better than a cell call, but there’s ways to fake being at home over landline if someone is determined enough.
It isn’t impossible though. You get the right investigators, they verify that your device was at home, and everything else is consistent with you being there, you could get bumped way down the list for their focus. Mind you, if every other possible suspect is then cleared, they’ll come back to you.
The police have nothing to do with it. They aren’t used to obtain records, that’s done through the legal system like court orders
You do know that the cops are the ones that do the legwork, right? That most prosecutors rely on them to provide cause to get warrants in the first place. If the cops keep putting the same person forward as their target, that’s who a DA will try to get warrants for, not some other random asshole.
If you can’t convince the cops of your alibi, then chances are good that they’ll keep plodding along at it, regardless of them being right or wrong.
So, yeah, the cops have something to do with it
No, that’s not how it works, the cops have nothing to do with it. You tell your defense attorney that you were watching youtube, your attorney tells the judge you need those records from google, the judge’s court sends a warrant to google inc., then google sends those records to the court.
That’s how it should work.
Nobody with a lick of sense should be telling the police anything at all. Their attorney should. But that’s not what OP asked.
OP asked if the simple fact would be enough to get police off his ass. It wouldn’t be.
But yes, police can absolutely request records with your consent, and do at times. If you’re dumb enough to not have a lawyer in between.
And, they can as part of their investigation, request warrants for the same information. And they do. It has happened. It isn’t a hypothetical. Various law enforcement agencies get warrants for goggle data often enough that it’s no secret.
For your attorney to be asking for a court order for your records would only happen after you were charged. That’s not what OP asked about.
Afaik, Google wouldn’t even hesitate to give your data to your own attorney anyway. They might, just on the basis of them not wanting to play nice, but records like that can be gained by consent. It’s why cops can track cell phones that are yours without cops needing to get a warrant. If you’re agreeing to it, your due process rights are covered.
Again, you aren’t wrong if Google refused to give your attorney the information. They would then need to be forced via court order. But that isn’t the same thing as a warrant. All warrants are court orders, not all court orders are warrants.
Having an attorney means they have power of attorney. A request from them on your behalf is the same as you making the request. If Google resisted that request, and they could cook up some kind of basis for that I’m sure, but the attorney still wouldn’t need a warrant. Their request would be legal.
A warrant is permission from a court to take an action that would otherwise be illegal, and are issued to agents of the court/state (here in the US anyway, I’m not sure about anywhere else) to take actions that violate rights of citizens or other entities without due process. The warrant is supposed to be part of your due process, though they get abused all to hell and back.
It is police that serve warrants though, usually. They aren’t the only ones, and you could argue that any government agent acting on a warrant is de facto police, but chances of a warrant getting executed without some kind of law enforcement officer present are low. Particularly in the scenario OP asked about.
Think about it like this. If I want to get money from my bank account, I can, within the limitations set by my bank (hours of operation, etc). If I want someone else to be able to, there’s formalities involved, such as putting them on the account or granting them power of attorney. POA of that nature means they act as though they are me for a range of legal statuses. I could sign papers to make anyone POA, but the A in that is Attorney, and once a lawyer represents you officially, they have wide ranging ability to act on your behalf in a legal proceeding.
The courts, and by extension the “Justice system” that includes police, prosecutors and other agents, need a warrant if I don’t give permission. But I can give them that permission, sign some paperwork, and their requests for information would be the same as if I made the request.
And that’s what would happen in OP’s scenario where they want to provide an alibi. If you don’t want to clear yourself via YouTube history, that’s a different question entirely. But, once again, in the hopes of preventing this spiraling, OP asked about providing that alibi to the police.
You’re working on the idea of exhonoration being only at trial. Which, it still wouldn’t take a warrant since it’s your lawyer. But I’m working before indictment, when the investigation is still ongoing because that’s when it would first come up for an accused person. The cops say “where were you at X?” You say, “jerking off to anime on YouTube”, and they want to know if that’s true.
For it to reach trial before you bring it up means your lawyer is not doing their due diligence by asking what the fuck you were doing at the time of the crime.
OP didn’t ask what you seem to think they asked
They sure as fuck didn’t ask what you think they asked either, and since your responses have been inaccurate, I’m willing to stand by mine as answering the spirit of it, as well as a more useful one.
Dreamer.