Norwegian Police, Seeking Info On 2 Bloggers, Take Data From 7,000 Accounts 100
xiando writes "Norwegian police were asked by officials in Italy to get personal information about two bloggers who were using a server in Oslo. The police decided the best thing to do would be to take the server's hard drive, along with personal information from about 7,000 other users (Google translation of Norwegian original). Other ISPs say this is standard operating procedure in Norway these days."
Google convicts me... (Score:2)
Damn, I knew I shouldn't have Google'd Autistici to see what the hell they were about. Click one link, get a terrorist charge in Italy.
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Being autistic is a crime in Italy?
Bad news for Slashdotters.
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autistici.org has NOTHING to do with Autism...
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What's so bad about this website? I'm looking at it through Tor from a highly secured browser using HTTPS. I was expecting child porn or the homepage of a terrorist organization.
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Maybe it has pictures of Mussol- err, Berlusconi on a bad hair day or something similarly incriminating.
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yo dawg, I herd you like being under terror...
so I suspect you of terrorism whenever you hit a non conforming site.
And in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Some time back, there was a judgment that allowed police to trawl through the entire contents of a hard drive if they had a subpoena for one person's data from the drive, so I was wondering if the following scenario would work:
Police get a subpoena for electronic bank records of an individual. They go to the bank and the bank offers to provide the relevant data. However, the police say: "No, this subpoena is not limited like that. Give us all the hard drives that might contain data on the subject". The bank is compelled to hand over thousands of hard drives. Now the police can trawl through bank records of millions of people unrelated to the original subpoena.
Could this happen? Will it happen?
Re:And in the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Could this happen? Will it happen?
Yes and yes, of course. In particular, invoke any of the magic words "terrorism," "national security," "child pornography," "drug dealing," or "intellectual property," and the Constitution no longer applies. The kind of large-scale fishing expedition you describe is entirely in keeping with this policy.
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the Constitution no longer applies.
Would that be the Norwegian constitution?
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Jeez, at least read the subject field in the post you're replying to.
Re:And in the USA (Score:4, Funny)
Not for long. Norway has oil.
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Judging from your screen name, I'd think that you'd be interested in having the easy prey made available.
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* [...] gods [...]
* [...] conservatives [...]
See the error in your reasoning, there ?
Re:And in the USA (Score:5, Informative)
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With a "national security letter" and some TLA dudes with guns, they probably could; but given the sort of IT systems banks use, that would probably net them a container trailer full of hard drives, in no particular order, each one containing fra
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Could this happen? Will it happen?
You forgot two questions:
Has it happened already? Will we ever find out?
The banks got a huge bailout, I'm sure they'd not complain too bitterly if they had to sign a "National Security" gag order.
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Some time back, there was a judgment that allowed police to trawl through the entire contents of a hard drive if they had a subpoena for one person's data from the drive, so I was wondering if ....snip...
And what if the drive was a massive distributed file system like Google or Yahoo?
Not even a file system but a distributed data base. Perhaps an Oracle RAC resource.
And in EU there are data replication issues so the services may be forced off line because no live replicated data exists.
Might take the Lustre of it when the electric bill arrives.
"Not something that only happens in the U.S." (Score:5, Interesting)
"Not something that only happens in the U.S."
Wonderful sub-headline in the linked article. Great example of our worldwide reputation nowadays.
Re:"Not something that only happens in the U.S." (Score:5, Interesting)
"Not something that only happens in the U.S."
Wonderful sub-headline in the linked article. Great example of our worldwide reputation nowadays.
It is something that also happens in EU. The root of this is a directive [wikipedia.org] from EU, transformed to Norse law. Norway is in a position where it can oppose directives from EU, but as of yet and as a principle, it has made all EU directives into Norse law.
The Scandinavian countries has a tradition of keeping the laws on the level of an easy to understand ethical foundation and as much details as possible outside the laws in regulatory frameworks. Most of the laws are written in an easy to understand, hard to twist, plain language (those parts that aren't, are hundreds of years old "fossils", the laws gets rewritten in simpler (more modern) language as they evolve, of course, to sanitise an EU directive into something simple and easy to understand is very challenging). This makes the regulatory frameworks easy to revise when parts of them lead to unfortunate, unexpected, side effects, and to modernize when necessary, without loosing sight of the ethical principles on which they are founded. The principle of simplicity in laws and regulations and the sharp separation of what belongs where, is also the reason Scandinavian citizens take laws and regulations, both the creation of them and the duty to follow them, more serious then other Europeans. EU has a tradition of keeping as much details as possible into its directives (a.k.a. the laws of EU) and they are written in a very bureaucratic language (in Swenglish and Denglish, not real Swedish or Danish, English is mostly a sub-language of the Nordic languages and it just takes a few simple changes (mostly spelling and prepositions) to transform it into formally correct translations, but it gets very ugly and simplistic, on a level of grunts and groans, most Scandinavian EU politicians stick to reading the French and German language versions of proposed EU directives), with lots of special cases, that aim to please the opposing wills of, and within, the EU countries. Proposed EU directives can also be changed the last minute before they are accepted (I think a proposal should be in a stable state at least a couple of weeks before they are accepted, so that people have a chance to understand them). The EU directives are to abundant and to much of a mess for anybody, except experts in the field in which they apply, to understand. The politicians that approves them rarely understand what they approve. In the Scandinavian countries, this means that the full effect of what an EU directive will implicate is not understood before it is rewritten into a national law proposal and then it is already to late to stop it without leaving EU (in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, Norwegians could theoretically still refuse to adopt it), most other European countries just dump the EU directives word-by-word into their own messy laws and then mostly ignore them (as they already do with laws that comes from within the country).
At least Norway isn't in the position of its neighbours Sweden, Finland and Denmark, that are more closely tied to EU and is obliged to incorporate all EU directives into their own national law.
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Socialism is not a form of government. It is an economic model. Tyranny does derive from economic models. Tyranny derives from the way in which a government approaches them.
Socialism is extraordinarily far from causal in this situation.
Actually, Socialism is (Score:3, Interesting)
a theory of Political Economy, and includes both an economic model and a political/government model. In particular, it postulates government's executive powers that for "public good" can transcend many rights of individuals, not just rights to own property. Most historical forms of Socialism actually postulated the so-called "tyranny of the proletariat" as a necessary condition of enduring Socialist ways in the society.
Socialism has invariably led to expansion of government's power even where it did not res
Re:Actually, Socialism is (Score:5, Insightful)
Did the Op also denounce capitalism when it was discovered that America was viciously torturing prisoners at Guantanamo?
It is trivial to point out that to explore socialism one must also explore political theory. No one suggested otherwise. However, it is wrong to view it as a model of government. Governments have people in power. "Socialism" does has no comment here. Perhaps the state is a socialist oligarchy, or a monarchy, or a democracy, or a dictatorship, or even a communist state!
Governments work to expand their powers regardless of the economic model being applied. Conflating the two is dangerous because people end up thinking like the OP: that socialism results in police grabbing power.
Socialism has no causal force here beyond the fore common to all such systems. The problem is that people are willing to trade liberty for security, which results in police forces being granted far more power than is necessary or safe.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem with socialism in America is this: It only applies to the rich.
Except that it doesn't. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Unemployment, welfare, disability. Tax breaks for families with children. Drug programs for senior citizens.
But socialism for the poor such as free or low cost medical care, ensuring that all have adequate food, shelter, and clothing, help for the indigent, these things are frowned upon and looked upon as somehow bad or evil.
Go ahead, try and touch any of the above programs. In particular, "Social Security" is the so-called third rail of politics. About the only program that the people can get behind hating is welfare, and that's because it has a reputation of people just sitting on their ass and collecting a check just because they can. If you told people that
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Government always seeks to expand and entrench itself. Socialist policies are a means of accomplishing this. If the people come to depend on social programs, they will invariably depend on the government as well.
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Re:Socialism at Work (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that only "socialists" do these things, you are desperately naive. Unless of course you're using the definition of socialism which seems to be quite popular among so-called conservatives these days, "any policy I currently don't like."
Actually, this definition of Socialism was popular (Score:1)
all across the Eastern Bloc. If you do not know this, *you* are hopelessly naive. The difference between Socialists and others is that under Socialism the overwhelming power of the State (which it supposedly wields for the "public good" and in the "defense of the commons") rightfully supersedes individual rights, which are presumed to proceed from the "society" anyway. Other theories of government recognize other sources of rights, such as natural rights of the individual.
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all across the Eastern Bloc. If you do not know this, *you* are hopelessly naive. The difference between Socialists and others is that under Socialism the overwhelming power of the State (which it supposedly wields for the "public good" and in the "defense of the commons") rightfully supersedes individual rights, which are presumed to proceed from the "society" anyway. Other theories of government recognize other sources of rights, such as natural rights of the individual.
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Is it the Bush era and legacy of expanding government and trampling on rights of the individual in the name of "public good" (war on terrorism). Was he socialist?
Re:Socialism at Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe he is a larval Randroid, or one of those people who thinks that "libertarian" means "authoritarian who hates paying taxes"...
Re:Socialism at Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Conservativism today means: I take any govermental service as long as my boss doesn't have to pay taxes.
It's the completely fucked up idea that one has to protect the rich and the powerful, because one could one day be rich and powerful too, and then one might not like to pay taxes. But the idea that one day one could be poor and unable to help oneself gets refused because if that is something that only happens to other people.
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A lot of ex US conservatives have said that this is exactly what's happening, they know they're hurting themselves and putting themselves in more danger, but they all continue with it because they think they'll all be fortune 500 CEOs one day and they want to make it easier for themselves.
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Funny thing, though, is that his kind of thinking is the result of 60 years of McCarthyist brainwashing.
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the only difference in a capitalist economy would be that the ISPs would be paid a "small" fee for handing over the data.
Handing over data about people is not a moral question, it's a business decision.
Re:Socialism at Work (Score:5, Informative)
Your quote:
What can you say except welcome to Socialism at work? Trust us, we're the government, we know what's best.
I'll counter your Troll with a fact from the article:
In pursuit of two bloggers who have been critical of a right-extremist group in Italy, the Norwegian police seized about 7,000 people.
So no, this is not about socialism, this is about Conservatism. People who join the police and the military tend to be Right Wing, so it's not surprising that anybody critical of the Right Wing would be targeted by police. This is why anti-war and human rights activists are often harassed and spied on by governments and police forces around the world.
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That seems to be the only explanation for law enforcement around the World.
Here in the States, when the Rev. Martin Luther King was organizaing peaceful protests and never having promoted or encouraged violence, the FBI were watching him like he was some violent militant revolutionary.
And yet. some big mouthed psycho who publically preaches violence slips right on through and shoots up the place.
John Lennon was watched too for being a peacenik.
The lesson I'm getting is, if you want to change the World, ac
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I don't believe her having the cerebral ability for an inside job, sorry.
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Ah, but maybe that's because she's so good at it!? (though in fairness, the best mule / etc. is an unknowing one)
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Why have I seen these theories about Palin but not Reagan? Reagan was right-winger Jesus, but Palin is a plant? Is it some kind of sexism, or are the right-wingers just less extreme these days? The tea party's still enamored with her.
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The lesson I'm getting is, if you want to change the World, act like a conservative right winger and then slowly poison them from the inside.
I saw that cartoon [salon.com] too. ISTM both parties are trying to destroy themselves from within. Either that or they are both working for the corporations that pay for their campaigns. Nah, that couldn't be it because that's blatant bribery.
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
What can you say except welcome to Socialism at work? Trust us, we're the government, we know what's best.
Actually it sounds like fascism to me.
One of socialism's (purported) goals is to reduce levels of government and government power overall in place of individual or collective power.
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No, prefering individual power is liberalism
Prefering collective power over 'the powers that be', is socialism
Prefering 'the powers that be' is conservatism.
You can also extend socialism to prefer collective power over individuals, then it becomes stalinism.
This gets particular complicated in the US where socialism and parts of liberalism both share the "liberal" lab
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Denmark, Great Britain, and Spain are all constitutional monarchies that are largely socialist. They all have an elected parliament and prime minister/president, and they all have either a king or queen.
Socialism isn't a system of government, it's a direction of government.
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(that said, this has nothing to do with socialism, and has happened even in that great bastion of capitalism of the world, China. Oh, and the US, too.)
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Dude, if you say that we're living in a socialist world, you should go and do a little reading about the various economic and social models. We're about as far from socialism as we'll ever be.
Cloud computing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cloud computing (Score:4, Interesting)
If your data is stored in a cloud, then it is bound to get trawled through multiple times per year due to subpoenas for other people.
I'm comfortable with that. I'll let as many policing forces trawl through my Gmail as the government agencies desire, provided that I'm allowed to use (PGP) end to end encryption to my heart's content.
The FBI has been looking into requiring online services to be able to comply with a wire-tap order (and decrypt any encrypted data) -- Google can't comply with a demand to decrypt my data as long as Gmail lets me send arbitrary textual data and/or attachments -- The next step will be outlawing end to end encryption; Mark my words.
My cloud has a silver lining -- an envelope of end to end encryption.
It's like you can't browse the internet anymore... (Score:2)
...without the government getting in your way.
Anywhere.
Anymore.
--
The principles of Free Software are built atop the principles of intellectual property.
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That's what my sig means. It's a nice little garden. But do NOT touch the link of knowledge of good and evil! If you do that you will be TOS'ed out of the cozy little garden.
Possible? (Score:3)
How hard would it be to rig the systems so that pulling the drives physically out of the servers rendered them unreadable? I'm thinking some kind of encrypted striping on the individual drives, and the whole array running through a second hardware encryptor hooked up to GPS and a passphrase... maybe also an internal sensor linked to something inside the wall of the server room. Move the encryptor box out of the room and it scrambles the key, rendering the array useless even if the correct passphrase is given. Restore it to the room, and re-enter the passphrase, and it can be used to read the array again.
Anyone wanting to access the data on the array would have to either do so with the hardware in situ, or demand a copy be run off for them. Confiscating the hardware would net them nothing. And unless they demanded that the keys to the kingdom be handed over, they couldn't trust the information they were getting.
There could also be a system set up so that if an organisation's access to its own data was compromised in this way, one of the required decryption keys could be remotely scrambled and the original only known by someone overseas and outside of the local authorities' jurisdiction. Run that link through sufficient obscuration methods and it might become impossible to find out precisely who has that key and where they're located, or at least extremely difficult and time-consuming.
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Well, they could be rigged in such a way that NOBODY, not even the rightful owner, could decrypt the data garbage on them anymore.
The question is, what ISP would do that? After all, they'd pretty much kill their own business model that way. So, they will buy new HDs, restore from backups and go on with their lives.
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Obligatory:
http://xkcd.com/538/ [xkcd.com]
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Well, they're your drives. I guess they might be able to get you on discharging a firearm in an unsafe manner and obstruction of justice, although that last one could be tricky to make stick.
Maybe have the drives poised above an industrial shredder running off a lot of batteries, and the whole thing wrapped in armor? Of course, you'd have to figure out how to proof it against physical intrusion when you were offsite or asleep, or if you were manhandled offsite before you could trigger anything, or if you
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a) You can feed fake data to a GPS receiver, or fake receiver data to the running computer. :)
b) Moving a running machine from a wall outlet to a portable power supply is not hard. Think about the problem for more than two minutes and let me know what you come up with.
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That *is* cleverer. :)
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A fairly simple solution would be to use a large encryption key that only existed offsite (and offline), so that whenever the power goes, you have no way of decrypting without the key.
That means you have to physically show up at the data center whenever the power goes (cumbersome), but with uptimes these days that shouldn't be a problem.
If the police gets a warrant and comes home to your house by surprise, you better have a plan for that though. If you're really paranoid you probably could get a hold of "pa
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links to the autistici pages (Score:1)
Unnecessary hard work (ObXkcd) (Score:1)
From TFA:
Kopierte hele harddisken i jakten på to brukere
Copied the entire hard disk in the hunt for two users
Apparently, the Norwegian politi doesn't know regular expressions. See http://xkcd.com/208/ [xkcd.com]
Outlook not so good (Score:1)
The legal loophole that makes this happen (Score:2)
The norwegian police was asked by the italian police to retrieve this data. The norwegian police is eager to comply with requests from foreign police, as they themselves may need that kind of help abroad later. The loophole is that apparently no norwegian court is involved in the decision and norwegian laws are not consulted.
The bottom line is that you are not protected by your own country's laws when it comes to confiscating data. It's enough that someone in one of a hundred countries can get a police offi
RAID 5 or 6 (Score:2)
So if the disk was part of a raid 5 system the cops would have been screwed? If they only took 1 harddisk...