A man to be put in jail for clearing Google Chrome history

Despite having no distant charges, the man can spend twenty years in jail.

A Grand Jury indictment states that Khairullozhon Matanov, former taxi driver "deleted a large amount of information from his Google Chrome Internet cache" following the bombing, including "references to the video of the suspected bombers [later identified as the Tsarnaevs]," "two of the photographs of the bombers released at approximately the same time," and "a photograph of Officer Sean Collier, who had been allegedly killed by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev."

Because Matanov deleted his cache, he was charged with "Destruction, Alteration, and Falsification of Records, Documents, and a Tangible Object in a Federal Investigation" which could land him in a cell for 20 years.

Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Hanni Fakhoury said that the government's "underlying theory" is this:

"Don't even think about deleting anything that may be harmful to you, because we may come after you at some point in the future for some unforeseen reason and we want to be able to have access to that data. And if we don't have access to that data, we're going to slap an obstruction charge that has as 20-year maximum on you."