I love this question.
The police would say, in my opinion, that the phone being somewhere was evidence if they needed it to be and say that it didn't prove the owner was there if they didn't want it to be useful.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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You are completely right, but I would hope the defense would submit it as evidence.
Do you not understand the concept of a defence attorney? It's not just the police that decide what is and isn't evidence.
Does the defense attorney go out to the scene, conduct interviews, photograph items of interest, or secure custody of any evidence gathered?
It's the police that decide what is "evidence" and attorneys argue over what they found later. A good attorney might go out and look for some of those things after the fact, but the vast majority will not. You either gather your own evidence or roll the dice with the police actually doing their jobs.
Are you seriously suggesting a police force will not secure a murder suspect's phone as part of their enquiries?
Or that, if they didn't, this would work against them in court later?
Im suggesting that police will find the evidence that best fits the narrative they're trying to portray. If the phone helps their case, sure. If it doesn't, or contains evidence to the contrary, there's a decent chance it'll get "accidentally" misplaced if it's even collected at all. They're out to prove your guilt, not suggest your innocence.
You act like police never withhold or tamper with evidence. The persons point was that police have an inherent advantage because they get the first look at evidence, for a good long while, until itβs turned over to any defense team.
Which is part of the reason the burden of proof is on them.
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You donβt need an alibi. You donβt need to provide evidence. You are presumed innocent. The cops need to prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Unless youβre in the US, then youβre fucked.
Had me in the first half
if you have that, thereβs probably location data and signin/unlock events that would tell a more compelling story. Especially if you use biometric unlock.
It wouldn't exonerate you, unless you could prove beyond a doubt that it was you using the phone. It'd be easy, if you were planning a murder, to give an accomplice your phone and have them use it all night to cover for you. It might be able to be used in conjunction with other evidence, though, to assist in your defense.
Wrong, that's the opposite of how reasonable doubt works. It is the prosecutor's job to prove beyond doubt that the defendent is guilty of the charges. The defendent does not need to prove they are innocent.
If the prosecutor can't prove that the defendent is lying about the alibi, then they've failed at their job.
That's how it's supposed to work but rarely actually does.
It's how the subway vigilante who choked an unstable yet unarmed homeless black man was acquitted.
It's like saying you couldn't have committed a crime because your TV was on at the time; it seems too flimsy to even be usable if you didn't have some other form of evidence supporting that it was actually you using it to go along with it. I'm not a lawyer, so it's possible I'm totally wrong, but surely no competent lawyer would expect that to work and no judge would take that as evidence on its own merits.
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Are you sure? Sounds like how it used to be, you know, before people were taken off the streets by masked men.
The commenter is still completely wrong, then. In that case there is no due process and you're just guilty because people with guns say so.
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I'd say not only the videos, but also the rest of your browsing history, and comment history, etc. If you can prove with a timeline that what you were doing was in line with the rest of your behavior that week, it'd be some strong evidence in your favor.
I don't need a jury of my peers judging my comment history. I'll just take the guilty plea, thank you.
I hope you feel really ashamed of this comment! And all your other comments kind stranger!
A phone playing a video would not be sufficient to establish that you were at home, but merely that the phone was powered on somewhere. But if YouTube had records that indicated your phone was connecting using an IP address at your home, then the phone's location could be ascertained.
But that still doesn't say anything about where you are, since not everyone -- even in 2025 -- carries their phone every time they leave home.
But if YouTube also registered a Like on a video at a particular time, and it can separately be proved that no one else could be at your house and no one else connected to your home network, and that your phone was not modified in such a way to fake such an action (eg a VPN), then this would be enough circumstantial evidence to convince a jury that you were probably at home.
And if home is nowhere near the murder scene, then this could be a defense.
Maybe. As you can see, a lot of "if"s are needed to string together an alibi, let alone a good one.
It is a piece of evidence. The jury would decide how much weight to put on that evidence. Depending on other factors, the jury could decide it is compelling and provides reasonable doubt, or, they could decide it is not compelling and disregard it and look at all the other evidence regardless of this particular bit.
Edit to add: Prior to trial there is a jury of one, the prosecutor. There is a chance that the prosecutor will find that evidence compelling and not even bring charges, or dismiss them if they were already brought.
I remember a streamer faked a stream to murder his girlfriend/ex-wife. His alibi did not work.
McCullagh eventually admitted to authorities that the live stream was not recorded on the night of McNallyβs death. McCullagh also allegedly left his phone in McNallyβs house after her murder.
Dude got scared in the interrogation and fessed up. Lmfao, if you can't withstand being berated in a police interrogation, maybe don't do a murder. Also, leaving your phone in a crime scene is like the nail in the coffin.
Don't, like, bring your phone while doing crime
Yeah, I think the phone is what sunk him.
Twist: The videos were all about how to get away with murder.
Well no, because all those phone records show is that someone was using your phone at your house during x times to watch videos. There is no verification that it's actually you. Now, if we actually had face tracking technology to see whether or not you're actually watching ads, that could change. But as for right now, no.
Crimes are (ostensibly) supposed to be proven beyond doubt, so yes, it can be (and often is, I work for a telecom) used evidence, for both prosecution and defence.
It would absolutely be used as evidence in your favour by your defence though. It's not conclusive, but it helps.
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Depends on how bad the cops want to pin it on you.
If they're on your ass hard, they'll ignore exculpatory evidence. Since only YouTube playing isn't concrete enough to guarantee much of anything about where you were, it's definitely not going to satisfy them without more.
Even the phone itself being in you home the entire time isn't definitive proof you were there.
There's not even a guarantee you could establish reasonable doubt with every record of your phone being available, so you can't pin your hopes on a jury either.
Hell, you could be on a call from a landline, and that isn't sure fire proof you were at home. It's better than a cell call, but there's ways to fake being at home over landline if someone is determined enough.
It isn't impossible though. You get the right investigators, they verify that your device was at home, and everything else is consistent with you being there, you could get bumped way down the list for their focus. Mind you, if every other possible suspect is then cleared, they'll come back to you.
The police have nothing to do with it. They aren't used to obtain records, that's done through the legal system like court orders
You do know that the cops are the ones that do the legwork, right? That most prosecutors rely on them to provide cause to get warrants in the first place. If the cops keep putting the same person forward as their target, that's who a DA will try to get warrants for, not some other random asshole.
If you can't convince the cops of your alibi, then chances are good that they'll keep plodding along at it, regardless of them being right or wrong.
So, yeah, the cops have something to do with it
No, that's not how it works, the cops have nothing to do with it. You tell your defense attorney that you were watching youtube, your attorney tells the judge you need those records from google, the judge's court sends a warrant to google inc., then google sends those records to the court.
That's how it should work.
Nobody with a lick of sense should be telling the police anything at all. Their attorney should. But that's not what OP asked.
OP asked if the simple fact would be enough to get police off his ass. It wouldn't be.
But yes, police can absolutely request records with your consent, and do at times. If you're dumb enough to not have a lawyer in between.
And, they can as part of their investigation, request warrants for the same information. And they do. It has happened. It isn't a hypothetical. Various law enforcement agencies get warrants for goggle data often enough that it's no secret.
For your attorney to be asking for a court order for your records would only happen after you were charged. That's not what OP asked about.
Afaik, Google wouldn't even hesitate to give your data to your own attorney anyway. They might, just on the basis of them not wanting to play nice, but records like that can be gained by consent. It's why cops can track cell phones that are yours without cops needing to get a warrant. If you're agreeing to it, your due process rights are covered.
Again, you aren't wrong if Google refused to give your attorney the information. They would then need to be forced via court order. But that isn't the same thing as a warrant. All warrants are court orders, not all court orders are warrants.
Having an attorney means they have power of attorney. A request from them on your behalf is the same as you making the request. If Google resisted that request, and they could cook up some kind of basis for that I'm sure, but the attorney still wouldn't need a warrant. Their request would be legal.
A warrant is permission from a court to take an action that would otherwise be illegal, and are issued to agents of the court/state (here in the US anyway, I'm not sure about anywhere else) to take actions that violate rights of citizens or other entities without due process. The warrant is supposed to be part of your due process, though they get abused all to hell and back.
It is police that serve warrants though, usually. They aren't the only ones, and you could argue that any government agent acting on a warrant is de facto police, but chances of a warrant getting executed without some kind of law enforcement officer present are low. Particularly in the scenario OP asked about.
Think about it like this. If I want to get money from my bank account, I can, within the limitations set by my bank (hours of operation, etc). If I want someone else to be able to, there's formalities involved, such as putting them on the account or granting them power of attorney. POA of that nature means they act as though they are me for a range of legal statuses. I could sign papers to make anyone POA, but the A in that is Attorney, and once a lawyer represents you officially, they have wide ranging ability to act on your behalf in a legal proceeding.
The courts, and by extension the "Justice system" that includes police, prosecutors and other agents, need a warrant if I don't give permission. But I can give them that permission, sign some paperwork, and their requests for information would be the same as if I made the request.
And that's what would happen in OP's scenario where they want to provide an alibi. If you don't want to clear yourself via YouTube history, that's a different question entirely. But, once again, in the hopes of preventing this spiraling, OP asked about providing that alibi to the police.
You're working on the idea of exhonoration being only at trial. Which, it still wouldn't take a warrant since it's your lawyer. But I'm working before indictment, when the investigation is still ongoing because that's when it would first come up for an accused person. The cops say "where were you at X?" You say, "jerking off to anime on YouTube", and they want to know if that's true.
For it to reach trial before you bring it up means your lawyer is not doing their due diligence by asking what the fuck you were doing at the time of the crime.
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The prosecution lawyer is going to argue that evidence could have been faked. Then it comes down to how convincing the jury find that argument. Personally I'd say that you could have been using a VPN to make it appear that you were accessing Youtube from home or that you left your phone at home and just left Youtube auto playing or ran some sort of automation to search for and play videos.
If you can get logs that show the unlock time and format it was unlocked with. Say fingerprint, and the GPS location/satellites the packets were going through you could theoretically prove you were within that area with the phone. In practice though... Dont know if you could get the location data supenod from the ISP. So it's probably be on you to acquire the location data using something like googles location data. You can generally check it by going to Google maps, click your icon and choose timeline:
You can tell it to delete that data and set the retention period. Otherwise it will keep it for years if I remember correctly, I reduced mine to a couple weeks.
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It could certainly be used as evidence in your favor. Whether it by itself would be enough to exonerate you would depend on things like the evidence against you and how much weight the jury gave to your records.
Currently having a dozen eye witnesses does not count as an alibi these days.
Heck, the evidence being broadcast on national television doesnβt count (see recent political arrests)
Tangent: eye witness testimony is the worst kind of testimony.
Soon it might actually become the lesser evil, considering the possibility of deepfakes.
Evidence trustworthiness would be like (from least to most trustworthy):
- Photo/Audio Evidence
- Video Evidence
- Eyewitness testimony
- Eyewitness testimony + the witness was also also recording it at the time
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What you really need is to live in a country with super aggressive CCTV. Then proof is literally around every corner
There's nothing to prove that you were home with your phone.
Again Dennis? Who was it this time?
You'd have to prove it was not only you watching them, but that they were watched somewhere other than the crime scene. I mean, it's entirely possible to run YouTube on your phone while you're killing someone. Or be running YouTube at your home while you're not there.
Here's what I think, though IANAL:
Your phone being somewhere unusual is pretty good evidence you were there, especially if a crime happened there. What are the odds you gave your phone to someone to go commit a crime with it on them?
However, if you're planning on committing a crime, it wouldn't be that difficult to have it play videos while you're out doing said crime. It's evidence that something happened, but it isn't very strong evidence that you didn't commit the crime.
However, a criminal trial requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You don't need to prove that you're innocent. You just need to create enough doubt that you're guilty. It's the prosecution that has to prove that you're guilty.
I'll point out that just having videos play without interacting with the site would get undermined pretty easily. But if you were actively tapping around and deliberately interacting with the site, you'd have a stronger case that you were actually at home.
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