I could be mistaken about this, but I think that the ISP retains information about the physical locations of the IP addresses they assign and will surrender this information upon request from a law enforcement agency.
They do retain the psysical location of the ISP:s, yes, but you can get that information anywhere. Just type in your own IP address in
this service and you should see where your ISP is located within seconds. The info possessed by Google is in no way different from this.
It
is true that Google can release said information if a crime is suspected, but there is absolutely no reason as to why they should do so on their own accord. As stated above, Google gets
billions of searches and visitors
every single day, all year long. Out of these, I would hazard the guess that at least 50% search for topics that are somehow weird or sick, and hence there's absolutely no reason why they would focus on any specific one out of all these people unless they were specifically ordered to do so by an outside authority. They are just a search engine, after all, not some sort of Orwellian conspiracy. Releasing or compiling information about strange searches would achieve nothing on its own and would be detrimental to the health of the company, as they would lose customers because of this.
What I'm trying to say is that we live in a society where the stuff you google cannot,
by itself, in any way be used as some sort of evidence against you or your person. You'll need to be suspected of a crime first, before it can be used as what is commonly referred to as "supporting evidence". After all, just googling "HOW DO I DISSOLVE A DEAD BODY IN LIME?" does in no way prove that I'm a killer. It just proves I'm curious about how to dissolve a dead body in lime. Maybe I'm writing a paper on Mafia activities, or maybe I'm just curious, who knows? What is, in judicial affairs, referred to as
"the burden of proof" has very little to do with just googling stuff about how to dispose of a body. If, however, I was actually suspected of and arrested for
having disposed of a dead body in lime, then my Google searches suddenly would become very important as
supporting evidence of my having done so and having gathered said information via Google. But just the search on its' own proves absolutely nothing. Anyone can get on a search engine and type in a bunch of fucked up stuff without it making them suspect of anything. Unless you live in someplace like China or Russia, of course, where evidence is usually not necessary for making an arrest.
Semicolon, where are you? We miss you!