[didibus]

> 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.

[AussieWog93]

This is why nobody listens to philosophers.

Why, on any planet, would law enforcement issue a warrant to get user data from a company that doesn't have any user data?

You don't need to dive down into the fundamentals of logic and reasoning to answer this question.

[sp332]

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".

[aasasd]

Because law enforcement is clueless.

Or rather, they won't even bother with these nerdy distinctions.

[kortilla]

“You’re asking for something that doesn’t exist” isn’t a nerdy distinction.

Warrants aren’t like dollar bills the cops just pay to see things. They are issued on a case by case basis by a judge.

[aasasd]

You mean like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29042603 ?

[MetaWhirledPeas]

Sure it's not proof, but it's pretty good evidence.

This man is unlikely to be the shooter because he has no hands.

[bduerst]

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.

[blitzar]

The number of users and the number of issued warrants however are dependant...

[didibus]

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.

[kortilla]

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.