Okay, I'm gonna ask a question. How would they know his search history if the hard drive was gone?
Wouldn't all those files be on the Hard drive?
No, and you were adequately answered in the link to the other article.
Your ISP is required by law to retain some giant amount of your habits (I think 7 years)
It seems to me, and correct me if I am wrong, please, that the only other way would be to be already monitoring his activity on the web, which would mean they were already watching the guy for whatever reason, whether part of an investigation or part of a sting, and monitoring his web activity.
The ISP keeps history, all the major search engines keep history (if you sign into them, or if you don't clean your cookies regularly), and I am getting toward being certain that MS is keeping history - all on their servers, not your machine.
But, that all might be false too - someone else could have signed into his accounts and built this history over a long period of time (for instance if his girlfriend were actually an activist and using him).
One thing it does show is that he, himself, is not a hacker.
If ouy are doing something you shouldn't on the web, you do it from a laptop with a Linux OS, mac address spoofer, and an onion router, and absolutely *NO* identifying info onboard... Some folks keep a spare drive just for such purposes. Flip out your normal drive, flip in the war drive, go find a hotel, coffee shop, or unprotected wifi down in town somewhere, and assume your fully aliased ID.
Never EVER from home, and never using your normal aliases and logins.
He is likely not a geek.
and don;t ask me how I know.