Law in the browser? In the early 2000s, former U.S. senators Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley introduced a bill to force businesses to comply with federal prosecutors during investigations. It was largely a response to the Enron scandal in 2001, when an energy company was able to hide billions of dollars.
The bill, which became law, is known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and was signed by President Bush in 2002.
Since then, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has subtly provided the legal basis for prosecuting even the deletion of browser history.
One such case is that of Khairullozhon Matanov, a 24-year-old former taxi driver who ate lunch with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the night after the Boston Marathon bombings.
Federal prosecutors accused Matanov of using the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to destroy evidence in his browser, The Nation reports.
According to The Nation, Matanov learned that the Tsarnaevs were suspects in the bombing a few days after their meal, and went to report it to local police in Quincy, Massachusetts.
But he allegedly lied to police about when he prayed with Tamerlan. It was later discovered that he had also deleted his browsing history from his browser, as well as the videos from his computer.
In May 2014, after the FBI had been monitoring him for more than a year, Matanov was charged with four counts of obstruction of justice, specifically “destroying any record, document, or tangible object with intent to obstruct a federal investigation.” The charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, according to The Nation.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is largely concerned with corporate financial reporting, but one section, Section 802, imposes severe penalties for “destroying, concealing, or falsifying records, documents, or material objects” intended to obstruct or delay a federal investigation.
Of course, the ambiguities of the law and the extensive rhetoric of each judge allow it to be applied even to intangible, personal information stored in the records of an online activity.
Published by TheVerge.
