As mentioned in the tweet, the impressive part is that "DuckDuckGo doesn't have any search histories by design and, bc of that, has had 0 search warrants"
That's an abductive argument, which means it is one plausible explanation, but given the many possible explanations, it is not certain that the lack of search history is why they've had 0 search warrants.
To make them go check. Maybe they got lucky and the site design was flawed.
So they can say they did. The jury will wonder why the investigation didn't include the defendant's search history. Now they can say, "We asked but they didn't have it".
Terrible analogy. You don't need hands to shoot a gun, and the hands-less man would still be issued a warrant if there were evidence he was the shooter.
The point is that being issued warrants and claiming to not have search logs are independently conclusive.
Yeah, abduction reasoning is still useful, it can serve to orient us in our surroundings, aka, it can help us explore the search space from places that are more likely to be correct. So it's still a useful form of reasoning.
Just don't make the mistake of thinking it proves the consequent.
I'd much have preferred the tweet said:
"DuckDuckGo doesn't have any search histories by design and, this might be the reason why we've had 0 search warrants."
But it said:
"DuckDuckGo doesn't have any search histories by design and, bc of that, has had 0 search warrants"
That's a strong assertion, and it's not been demonstrated. You could likely say that it is because the police had never had a case where they needed too, given the lack of popularity of DDG, they might have found all they needed through other sources of warrants. Or it could be any other reason, like they don't even know it exists, or anything else I'm not thinking of.
Or you fundamentally misunderstand how warrants are issued and don’t realize that in order for the warrant to search something to be issued, the court (judge) first confirms that it’s something that actually can be searched.
tbf, DDG can't know that they have no requests because they don't collect history, although that wouldn't be a completely mad assumption. It is also conceivable that their market share is simply so small that no-one the police are chasing are known to use DDG for their web searches.
In fact the second is more likely since otherwise the Tweet would read, "we haven't been able to serve any warrant requests", rather than "we haven't received any"
Right... The one privacy-based search engine included in browser search engine lists. If the government wanted to make a secret deal with a company, it's not like they would make it known. Heck, they could even get cases redacted that mention it. People gotta make money.
That's an abductive argument, which means it is one plausible explanation, but given the many possible explanations, it is not certain that the lack of search history is why they've had 0 search warrants.