UK Police Want Plug-In Computer Crime Detectors 382
An anonymous reader writes "UK police are talking to private companies about using plug-in USB devices that can scour the hard drive of any device they are attached to, searching for evidence of illegal activity. The UK's Association of Chief Police Officers is considering using commercial devices that can perform targeted searches of text, pictures and computer code on hard drives, allowing untrained cops to detect anything from correspondence on stolen goods to child pornography. Police in the UK are desperate for a way of slashing the backlog of machines seized by the police in raids, with many forces having a backlog that will take a year to process." Maybe they shouldn't seize so many computers.
A year? (Score:1, Interesting)
Urm? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like crazy talk. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not much in the ways of encryption, but I assume if your computer's encrypted it'll be pretty difficult for this thing to work through the system, if not impossible.
Sounds like the cops just want a usb key that has a light that comes on when the law's been broken.
Mainstream computer illiteracy at work.
and the companion product.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seth
Encryption=suspicious? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:and the companion product.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just rewire your USB ports to run at 120v. And label it USB120 so you can point back at them for not reading when they try to charge you with damaging their equipment.
Re:Perfectly Legitimate (Score:5, Interesting)
One is write blocking. To prevent corruption, tampering, and similar issues, it is good practice to use a hardware write blocker and, where possible, work from a disk image made from the original disk through a write blocker. A USB bootable system is not going to have that level of assurance. In a lot of cases, cops will have to monkey with the BIOS to get it to boot the USB drive and, with the vast number of BIOSes, chipsets, hardware RAID boards, softRAID crap, etc, etc. out there, trusting software to prevent tampering or corruption seems potentially troublesome.
More generally, the demand for a "PC breathalyzer" is a demand that a difficult problem be made trivial so it can be done by unskilled or ignorant people. That sort of demand is rarely a harbinger of future quality, which is disquieting when people's freedoms are potentially at stake.
O RLY? (Score:4, Interesting)
UK police are talking to private companies about using plug-in USB devices that can scour the hard drive of any device they are attached to
I've got a rackmount OpenBSD box that claims otherwise.
Why not.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Should be easy in the UK. (Score:5, Interesting)
Any citizen who believes in human rights & the sovereignty of the individual should be willing to spend a little time in jail, rather than give the encryption key. A few days in jail is a small inconvenience compared to the return of tyranny that existed in the UK prior to 1800. You have the right to not be tortured into giving false confessions - this isn't the Medieval Ages or the Catholic Inquisition.
Remain strong; remain silent.
Re:Great... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Should be easy in the UK. (Score:5, Interesting)
USB? (Score:4, Interesting)
How would a USB device get access to the host system's drives?
Surely that would require drivers to be loaded on the host...
Not only would this be very OS specific, but it could easily be defeated, you could configure the host to detect the insertion of this particular type of usb device and perform a secure overwrite of all your incriminating files when such a device is inserted.
Cause and effect (Score:1, Interesting)
In the old days, everything ran on separate ports. Remote control had a port, file transfer had a port, Chat had a port.
Cause: Firewalls began blocking those ports to block the applications so users couldn't use them.
Effect: Today, this all runs on port 443. GotoMyPC, file sharing sites, most chat programs work on port 443.
The effect of this would be for users to move their data encrypted and online, into some other country that they can trust will not divulge the information when asked. Launch my client, provide my key, and map a drive over 443 to my data.
You take my PC, the data is not there. You break into my home and plug into my PC when I'm gone, the data's not going to be available. You somehow get the data from the host you have to spend a long time brute forcing the password.
Of course, they will then load up a fake root key onto my PC and man in the middle attack me, but one step at a time..
Re:Oh geez! This is too easy! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)
They probably wouldn't have a backlog of computers if they only confiscated computers where it might give be important evidence instead of using as away to punish people without the bother of a court case or even charging them. If they take your computer expect a long wait for your its return. If it does come back don't expect it to work.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Interesting)
Something like this happened to a friend of mine.
He owned a blog that he literally put up everything that happened in his life.
He added pages of an essay he was writing for History to his blog as he finished and edited them.
A few days after he turned in his paper he was asked to speak to the Dean where he was accused of plagiarism because Google turned up his blog (he uses a pseudo-name, and has google-analytics installed on his blog)
Took him a few meetings with the education board to prove that it was his blog and his own writing.
What a bitch, eh? The fact that the teacher merely typed it in Google and said "Good enough". He didn't bother to look for any pictures or any information that would hint that it was this particular persons blog.
Re:Should be easy in the UK. (Score:4, Interesting)
When I see a cop, I suddenly become a deaf-mute. Anything you say, even something as simple as, "I don't own a gun and know nothing about a robbery," can be used against you.
Attorney: "When you arrested Mr. Smith did you notice anything odd?"
Cop: "Yes when I told him about the robbery he said he doesn't own a gun."
Attorney: "What's odd about that?"
Cop: "I never said the robber used a gun, and yet somehow Mr. Smith knew that intimate detail. That's why we decided to detain him and press charges as the most-likely suspect."
Attorney: "Any other incriminating evidence?"
Cop: "The store-owner identified Mr. Smith as visiting the store that evening, and acting in a suspicious manner. He was at the scene of the crime."
Attorney: "So Mr. Smith was at the scene of the crime, was aware of how the robbery was committed...with a gun... and acted in a suspicious manner."
Cop: "Yes."
Ooops. You might be completely innocent, and yet because you stupidly opened your mouth, now you're headed towards a probable conviction. Yay.