Although this did have some relevance for establishing motive and state of mind, it was far too lurid and may have swayed the jury unreasonably, the court said. Harris was no longer seen as a murderer, and the state decided not to retry him.

But he didn’t get out of prison, because his phone had also revealed “lewd and sometimes illegal sexual messages and pictures with four minors,” which had landed him in jail on separate charges. He was finally released in 2025.

Or there’s the case of the Florida woman accused of strangling and robbing her own friend for money to buy drugs. In the hour before the killing, police say the woman searched for:

• “chemicals to passout a person”
• “making people faint”
• “ways to kill people in their sleep”
• “how to suffocate someone”
• “how to poison someone”

This was allegedly in addition to visiting a Yahoo! Answers page called “Whats on those rags that make people pass out?“ and a Wikipedia entry for “murder-suicide.“

Our phones, our confessors

From nude photos to questions about dead children and “luxury prisons for the rich,” our devices have become such a part of our lives that there is almost nothing people will not confide to them.

This extreme trust sits uneasily against an extreme paranoia about our gadgets. For years—as just one example—enough people have asked whether Facebook listens to your microphone without permission that the company has an official response.

But as examples like those above illustrate, there’s little reason for companies to resort to outright spying like this, because users simply can’t wait to divulge the most intimate details of their minds and bodies voluntarily. Even if you’re a privacy mode-using pro, your search history may be just a quick subpoena away.