UK Police To Step Up Hacking of Home PCs 595
toomanyairmiles writes "The Times of London reports that the United Kingdom's Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain to routinely hack into people's personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state that drives 'a coach and horses' through privacy laws."
Is this....legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Meh. Just another excuse to snoop on people without justification. If a warrant is issued then at least there is a paper trail leading back to who applied for the warrant any why. If this law goes through then it will be a free-for-all and history has demonstrated very well what happens then.
Also, as far as I'm aware, UK security services have been doing this for some time, this simply makes it legal. Given the majority of the population are not very tech savvy their solution wouldn't need to be that complex, although I imagine its more complex than just a key logger. The only evidence I have for this is talking to people who work in these organizations. The advice to me was get using TOR (although I can never configure it right) so maybe its not too complex, or maybe they were double bluffing me. Who knows? I'm guessing the arrest levels aren't so high because they would have to arrest almost everyone under 30 who's been on a computer. Once they've got the logistics sorted I'm sure they'll happily cart us to the gulag though.
=Smidge=
I will /make/ it legal. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
The U.K. government might as well just announce that their subjects no longer have any rights at all. They have effectively all been removed in practice. To put things in perspective, this country is on the verge of banning kitchen knives to try to reduce violent crime (now that private possession of firearms has been completely outlawed). The saddest part of all is that the subjects of the U.K. support this nonsense by a large margin.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, uh, then I'll just use a screwdriver and have fun stabbing you or I'll just smash your head in with a stone.
Or how about kicking the shit out of you with a pair of Doc Martens?
How about a nice baseball or cricket bat to the head? A shovel will do just fine as well but STOP! Hammertime!
Why don't I just use a scarf to strangle you?
Where do you want to end this crap?
You might enjoy living with mandatory children's cutlery, I don't.
The UK has potentially more surveillance than North Korea, but it's been useless in preventing crime.
And don't give me that shit about saving lives.
The UK doesn't have proper health care and just last week two ambulancemen were arrested for letting a man die because "he was not worth saving" ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article5420921.ece [timesonline.co.uk] )
There are far more serious issues the UK should deal with than cutlery.
UK's health care system (Score:3, Insightful)
"The UK doesn't have proper health care"
Since they have nationalized, guaranteed health care for all citizens, I'm curious as to what you think is improper about it. They spend a great deal of money on the system. It seems to me that all nationalized health care systems are moving to this system where the amount of care a citizen gets is in direct proportion to how much it will cost, or how hard it will be to save the patient (born pre-mature, sickly old patient, etc). So it's not like the UK is alone in ma
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Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Informative)
My wife and I have both been through various treatments, and it's always been quick, high quality, and efficient. There's been the odd minor hiccup, but that's all.
The biggest "problem" with the NHS is that some people expect it to be a luxury service. That is not the goal. The goal is to provide a good and cost effective health service for the entire population. If people wish, nothing stops them from paying for private care or taking out insurance to "top up" the care received on the NHS, such as going to a private hospital *if* there is a long waiting list for a particular NHS service..
Yes, you can expect to wait for non-emergency operations, and if that's an issue you can either pay for a specific operation privately or pay a little bit for private insurance.
That's what you have to expect with a publicly funded system: While I am perfectly happy to pay taxes towards universal health care, people are simply not willing to pay for the amount of excess capacity needed to avoid queues completely.
In fact, only about 10% of the population see that as worthwhile enough to pay even a couple of hundred pounds a year for comprehensive private insurance that lets them avoid the queues. That in itself is a pretty damn good testament that the capacity tradeoff for the NHS is just about right.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
You will never "prevent" crime. You can make it less appealing at best.
"Knife crime" will turn into "screwdriver crime" if you ban pointed knives.
Or they'll sharpen points on their knives themselves. It's not hard.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's simply not true. There are enough crimes of passion that people would never stop in the middle of to fabricate a weapon. That alone would save lives. I'm not saying it's a worthy justification, but it simply isn't true to say that they'd find another deadly weapon. Yes, they may then just strike with their hands in an attempt to kill, but it is less likely to succeed than a gun or knife.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it won't. If you're performing a crime of passion, you will likely strike at full force. Human flesh isn't very strong; even a butter knife will do serious damage, simply because it is a thin object.
A sharp knife allows you to cut meat with precision, since you don't need as much force for it. A dull one will still cut meat, but you lose that precision and need to use more force, thus increasing the chances that the knife will slip and the damage it does if it will. Thus this kind of idiocy is likely to cost, not save, lives.
I'm pretty sure you can kill a human with a meat tenderizer. It's a spiked steel mallet, after all, and usually stored near sharp meat-cutting knives.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK the perceived problem is "youths" going out armed with knives. There have been a lot of headlines recently wrt youths being stabbed to death. It's not obvious how much this is the papers blowing up a topical issue and how much is an actual increase in fatal youth on youth violence.
It may be that the decision to use the knife is a spur of the moment "crime of passion" thing, but the decision to carry said knife is certainly premeditated and there's no reason to suppose that adding a point to an otherwise round ended knife wouldn't also be done.
It is an offence in the UK to carry almost all knifes[1] in almost all circumstances in public. There are exceptions, folding pocket knifes (knives that do not lock open) with a blade of less than 3 inches and when you have a legitimate reason (e.g. a chef returning home from work or someone who has just bought a knife and is going home with it) but the law is an absolute offence with statutory defences (i.e. it's presumed you are guilty unless you can assert one of the defenses) so woe betide that chef who forgets and leaves his knives in the boot of the car when he goes into town to do his shopping.
[1] Actually it's any bladed or pointed article or offensive weapon. A child's plastic sword is illegal to carry in public, as is a spare safety pin that, AIUI, the mother of the bride always carries "just in case" (although that might come under traditional or religious dress defence, I'm not sure)
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?LegType=All+Legislation&title=Criminal+Justice+Act&Year=1988&searchEnacted=0&extentMatchOnly=0&confersPower=0&blanketAmendment=0&sortAlpha=0&TYPE=QS&PageNumber=1&NavFrom=0&parentActiveTextDocId=2116646&ActiveTextDocId=2116820&filesize=4468 [statutelaw.gov.uk]
Tim.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to follow up - the "plastic sword" thing isn't completely a joke:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084886/Rambo-student-charged-possessing-inch-plastic-knife-case-dropped.html [dailymail.co.uk]
Tim.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called free society, people die, deal with it.
Re:Nice strawman (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it? Or are the newspapers just writing more about it?
Remember a few years ago when gun crime was the "big thing"? Despite the stats showing that only a vanishingly small fraction of violent crimes in the UK involved a gun at the time... It was an impression created almost exclusively by the media with the help of family and friends of victims that were trotted out as "evidence" of how Britain was facing a plague of gun crime.
I am not saying knife crime isn't a problem - it is certainly a bigger problem than gun crime has been in this country since before the hand gun ban -, but I haven't seen any stats, just reports from the same media that never retracted or apologized for their unsupported "We are all going to be shot to death, OMG!!!!" scare stories.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you guys might want to figure out why the "young people" are pissed off and do something about it?
Frankly if I'm going to stab someone I think I might choose a good Phillips head screwdriver over a kitchen knife anyway. Knives tend to make good slashing weapons but stabbing might be a little better with something thin and pointed. the screwdriver will certainly raise fewer eyebrows when I am walking away with it and there's no chance of my hand sliding down the hilt to injure myself and leave DNA behind....
BTW, I carry two knives regularly. Handy little things they are and I've yet to feel the urge to plunge one into someone or hijack a plane with them - and yeah I flew with them prior to 9-11. I guess you guys are as much into security theater as our TSA is huh?
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Food for thought:
- There is no family culture in England like there is in Mediterranean countries (think the whole "mama" thing in Italy)
- There is no overall, unified set of traditions in England other than "go out and get pissed on Fridays"
- Media continuously pushes the image that happiness comes from buying stuff.
- There is no feeling of social responsibility like there is in Nordic and Germanic countries (for example, in Holland being called anti-social - asociaal - is actually an insult). Around here people are taught it's everybody for themselves and don't mind the others.
- The local heroes that youths aim to emulate are not those of science, culture or law - they're mostly "celebs" whose business is show-business and whose product is being scandalous.
- Parents are not made to take responsibility for the actions of their kids.
- A culture of political correctness, small-powers, centralized command-and-control and common law has taken away or distorted the powers of punishment/reward from socially-important actors such as teachers and social workers.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's strange how I can apply every point to my mediterranean country just by replacing "mediterranean" for any other vague reference to some zone with family connotations.
For example, change the sea reference to "italian" and you can apply the entire post to Spain.
What you describe is not a british culture illness.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
...young people are killing each other more and more.
Why do you think that is? All this discussion of ways and means of killing one another is very much secondary. The key question is, why do people want to kill one another at all? Human beings are ingenious, and will always find a way to do what they want.
Universal education was supposed to make us all more enlightened, tolerant, and humane. How come the opposite seems to be happening?
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way to reduce all crime, including knife crime, is to leave behind barbaric bullshit like Death Penalty. Not even the Roman Empire, which it's habit of crucifying criminals or throwing them to lions if they were feeling nice, managed to stop people from being criminals. "No mercy" simply means that the criminals will respond in kind, and make sure to leave no witnesses; it won't make them stop them being criminals, or others from becoming criminals. It will just turn a life of crime into an outright war, with all the collateral damage that implies.
Besides, all rights are dependant on the right to life. If the state has a right to suppress that just to make you feel safer from knife crime, why wouldn't it have the right to suspend any other right to make anyone else feel safer from the criminals/terrorists too ? And, if Death Penalty is an option, how much effort do you think it would take the government to frame a political dissident and have him executed ?
You can't stop knife crime no matter what you do, and getting "though on crime" will simply make the criminals though on you and cause lots of unnecessary grief for no gain. Just like the War on Drugs, or any other similar campaign. It makes for a nice election speech, but is quite a brain-dead policy to actually implement.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then those doctors have never prepared a meal more complicated than a microwave dinner. I have several different kinds of knives, and I use them properly. Pointed knives have a useful, necessary function as a proper chef's knife.
What's the criminal punishment in the UK for a teenager who is found carrying a knife, incidentally?
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then those doctors have never prepared a meal more complicated than a microwave dinner.
Actually, I find pointed knives critical for preparing microwave dinners. How else do you puncture the film across the top of tray?
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
You do of course have a CREDIBLE source for this right? I notice you didn't cite it - pity that (lol). I call B.S. on this and am happy to have my pointed kitchen implements. Hey, of that percentage what percent were self defense killings? And how exactly was this tally figured out? Who paid for this research? Oh man the questions are endless on this!
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Personally, I would like such ban just to see what tool will become next super weapon.
A broken bottle.
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You sir, deserve neither liberty NOR safety [wikiquote.org].
Swimming pool deaths outnumber firearm death in children. Plenty of sources [fightingforliberty.com]. Sooo..by all means, lets close them all down.
Shit, you weren't using your liberty anyways...
Would it be physically impossible to be stabbed with a non-pointy kitchen knife? Does that sound somehow better?
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Ok...I am being a little harsh. However, the point that Benjamin Franklin was making is that those who would trade their liberty for safety (commonly paraphrased as security) deserve neither.
If you ban everything that causes death, all you have done is surrender liberty. The mere act of surrendering your liberty simply sets a precedent with which more liberties can be taken.
England never was a nation of the Enlightenment, that's one of the reasons they fought against the French and the Americans...one of
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you confuse "democracy" with "the democratic ideal of government as a limited social contract...." It's not the same thing.
Pure democracy is essentially 2 wolves and a lamb voting about what you have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb protesting the vote.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Winston Churchill
as for americans voting based on the cult of personality, you may be on to something [wikipedia.org].
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Well, let's pretend we're in an imaginary world where:
1. There are no pointy things other than knives.
2. It is impossible to make things pointy.
3. Criminals obey they law.
Congratulations! In your imaginary world you have reduced deaths due to stabbing. Unfortunately deaths due to slicing are at an all time high.
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One way would be to reduce access to long pointed knives.
And how will you cut a whole watermelon then, or similar produce?
I would be happy not to have a pointed kitchen knife if it would save only one life.
Millions of people should be inconvenienced only so that someone can lose his life not through stabbing but through bashing his head in? Security theater indeed...
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Just some thoughts:
Restricting knives for purchase is just silly. Sort of like a policy found in some restaurants against pocket knives for employees (yep, under 3" blades) while allowing 12"+ knives for general usage in the shop. I'm sure that there are already laws preventing carrying concealed blades over a certain length, so this add nothing new. A file will take care of the dull end too. To bring the bring the "terrorist" flavor to the discussion, those airplanes that went crashing on 2001-09-11
V for Vendetta (Score:5, Insightful)
"But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror." [youtube.com]
I used to think V for Vendetta was fiction. It's starting to look like a documentary.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, you sound like one of those fucking gun-fetishist yanks. "Poor people without guns, that must be why they've no rights". No. The rights come through political machinations and the broad agreement of large groups of people. Change doesn't come because some isolationist nutjobs do or don't have guns.
As an example, the UK government has to respect the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. Both these documents have regularly trumped the government in court, and didn't need a single gun pointed at the government's head to get them to comply.
Secondly, private possession of firearms has not been "completely outlawed". There are plenty of people with rifles and shotguns next to their beds; Tony Martin comes to mind. You can even have your precious handgun if you can convince the police you have a "good reason" and they sign off on your license. Good luck.
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You can even have your precious handgun if you can convince the police you have a "good reason" and they sign off on your license.
Err.. no, that's what the situation was in 1997. Now, you have to convince the Defence Council, which is much harder.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a gun ownership supporter, and I agree with you philosophically, but I have to say this.
You don't seriously think a pack of armed citizens could actually stop the government from tyrannically taking away its rights do you? We've seen how successful "militia" groups have been when put face to face with ATF. If we're to believe the 9/11 stories, at least one plane load of Americans citizens didn't even have the guts to unite and take down hijackers armed with sporks and box cutters.
And look at our rights being taken away now... many citizens protested, but most just bitched and moaned and carried on with their lives with absolutely no willingness to go through the hell that protestors do. And if you haven't noticed, this generation by and large defines patriotism as being loyal to the government and going along with whatever it commands. You can't even say you're ashamed of your president without the public lashing out against you and branding you a traitor.
In the last two election cycles, we watched citizens, pundits, and politicians each call the "other guy" a dangerous lunatic with dangerous connections whose dangerously wrong ideas will bring about the end of life on our continent and perhaps the world. And in the next breath, these same people screaming that the end was nigh, made low-brow jokes about those candidates. If each election determines the fate of humanity, why do we still laugh and sing, and act as if it's business as usual?
I think the reality is that if things should ever come to Nazi Germany here in the US, the vast majority of Americans will shit their pants and hope that by buying a new iPod or pledging allegiance to a favorite cable news company, they will be left alone.
And when the tanks and stormtroopers move into suburbia, of those Americans who do own guns, more than half of them will shoot their loved ones in the faces, blow out their TVs, accidentally kill a neighbor, or take out a street lamp. Maybe one or two partisans will actually hit the broadside of a large armored vehicle or defend a street for a few hours. But maybe, just maybe, the ordinary citizens that comprise our military will refuse to take those tanks into suburbia too.
Sorry, my basic rifle marksmanship training came courtesy of the Army; I don't think I'd trust any armed civilian militia to protect me. The armed citizenry of the 18th century had something the armed citizenry of the 21st lacks: a sense of duty to the higher cause of Liberty and a real, qualified distrust of our leaders rather than manufactured political angst.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
You sir are incorrect. The 18th century citizenry had a few other things that the 21st century citizenry doesn't: Equivalency of arms and armory; support of a major 3rd party nation; distance (and more importantly time) from the British resupply depot and home base; an obviously corrupt and overbearing rulership of foreign British nationals.
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
so how is that working out in the USA? you guys sure showed your government how you felt when they tried to open guantanomo bay, introduced the patriot act and started an illegal war in the middle east didn't you?
Yeah, that showed em! And to think, they might have got away with all that crap if you guys didn't have your guns...
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
They have effectively all been removed in practice. To put things in perspective, this country is on the verge of banning kitchen knives to try to reduce violent crime (now that private possession of firearms has been completely outlawed).
15 years ago, after their big round of gun bans, we asked if there were to be a rash of stabbings would they try to ban knives. The response was "Don't be ridiculous.", now that there has been a rash of stabbings they are actually going to try to ban knives. When youthful criminals begin to bash each other on the head with Cricket bats, they will register and ban Cricket bats. Then rocks, then sticks, then anything not made of nerf.
It's not a slippery slope anymore, it's a waterslide.
LK
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:4, Funny)
It's not a slippery slope anymore, it's a waterslide.
And soon it will be a water flat.
For safety reasons, you know.
And they should remove the water; someone could drown. Just a flat surface will be best.
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The saddest part of all is that the subjects of the U.K. support this nonsense by a large margin.
Not quite. They're just preoccupied with the latest news on celebrities.
I've been living here for half a year now and I haven't seen a single word about this stuff in newspapers yet.
When will it be a crime to use secure operating systems?
Written vs. "Un-Written" Constitutions (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.K. government might as well just announce that their subjects no longer have any rights at all. They have effectively all been removed in practice.
This is where a unified, written Constitution comes in handy. Yeah, those can be abused as well... the Right wing points to courts basically ignoring the 10th Amendment for decades, and the Left Wing points to a number of Bush wartime programs. But the fact is, it's still much easier to plead your case in courts when you have your Constitution on paper, in clear written form, instead of a collection of traditions and court cases.
Want to complain that the US government is doing illegal searches and seizures? At least you have a 4th Amendment to point to and say "you're violating this law". In a country with an un-written Constitution, even if there's a court precedent on the issue, without a written Constitution, the government can simply decree a thing, and it's so, until they're booted out of office.
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Want to complain that the US government is doing illegal searches and seizures? At least you have a 4th Amendment to point to and say "you're violating this law". In a country with an un-written Constitution, even if there's a court precedent on the issue, without a written Constitution, the government can simply decree a thing, and it's so, until they're booted out of office.
Whereas in the UK, you'd point them at ECHR article 8.
Unless the UK decides to rescind its signature of the ECHR.l
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<rant type="major">
I've lived in 3 countries by now and the UK is the one country where I feel the most that I'm surrounded by the sheeple.
Once again the local wolves are increasing their powers to fleece the sheeple - I'm not surprised.
The pound is weak, it's highly likely that Britain is going to be the European country worst affected by the recession (in the last couple of years all the sheeple where busy getting themselves further and further into debt to buy all the useless consumer goods they sa
Re:Is this....legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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But if your system gets its hard drives copied, you want to make sure the data can't be recovered easily.
People have a right to privacy.
Re:Good reason to use Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Truecrypt will allow full encryption for either a Windows or Linux system. However, even if you have full drive encryption, once your computer is hacked and accessible while running data can extracted from it.
Didn't the UK also have a semi resent law about being forced to hand over passwords as well? If so encryption won't protect you much, as long as whatever you are hiding is worth spending the five year penalty in jail.
Re:Good reason to use Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good reason to use Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
If I break into your machine and am accessing it at your user level or at a higher level I will be looking at the same contents YOU are looking at - which is to say unencrypted unless you have lots of stuff you leave locked up and never use (lol). Encryption is GREAT when someone kicks in the door and runs off with a system that's sitting there turned off. It's less great when they get in while you're using it via network or physical means - you know grabbing your ass and shoving you away from the keyboard.
Crypto isn't the magic wand to fix this....
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It's less great when they get in while you're using it via network or physical means - you know grabbing your ass and shoving you away from the keyboard.
My computer is set up with a simple key combination to dismount my encrypted drives and wipe the memory the key was stored in. Somebody would have to be pretty sneaky to get me away from the keyboard while those drives were mounted without me hitting it.
Re:Good reason to use Linux (Score:5, Informative)
I know you were joking, but I have a story that is likely similar (not Linux though...).
Quite some years ago, I was running an Amiga as my main system (relatively high end Amiga 4000, not some toy games thing). I was talking to a guy on IRC and he was bragging about putting a bomb on a plane. This was well before 2001, so the world wasn't in the grips of "OMG terrorists!", but it still seemed like a fairly big deal to me. Now, from my perspective, I was pretty sure the guy was just talking out his arse, but I wasn't really 100% sure, so for safety's sake, I didn't really want to just leave it.
At this point, let me elaborate that I was in fact a teenager, and also not particularly "worldly wise". It was at this point, I made somewhat of a mistake. I had access to a few servers I really shouldn't have, and decided that since I didn't want to get involved in the process of a police investigation (there's nothing more I could tell them other than what the guy said on IRC), I sent an email "anonymously" through a badly configured mail server (forging my own headers using telnet as my SMTP client) and informed the police and the airport in question about what the guy had said.
Two days later, the police arrived at my door (um, yeh, I'd sent the email "anonymously", but hadn't taken any steps to obscure my IP address, so all they needed to do was call the owner of the mail server, followed by my ISP). They had a search warrant stating they could seize any computer related equipment in my house, and stated it was issued "under suspicion of Attempted Murder and Breach of the Telecommunications Act" (no I'm not kidding... it really did say "Attempted Murder").
They took all my computers and related equipment (right down to a stack of old SCSI drives I had in my sock drawer). I spent a couple of MONTHS without them. I got a nice write-up in the local paper, but that wasn't much consolation. After two months, I made a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority stating that it really was ridiculous for the police to have my stuff for so long (their ongoing excuse was that they sent it to another city for analysis). I finally got it back about two weeks after that, only to find that they'd ripped the HDD out of my A4000 and erased it. I can only assume they stuck it in a PC, saw that it was "not formatted" and tried to "recover" the data from it.
They made no statements about whether my HDD had been "helpful" in their investigation or not, and I heard no further from them after that (including no further comments about the "suspicion of attempted murder"!). The best I could get from them was a weak apology about my data loss, as being a private individual (and unemployed at that), there was no protection for my data under the law (if I'd been a company, I probably could've sued, but a private individual's data was (may still be?) essentially considered worthless in the eyes of the law).
For reference: the country this happened in was New Zealand - normally a pretty nice place, but don't expect small town cops, or even the "computer analysis team" to have ANY idea what they're doing or admit that this is the case (actually, I would HOPE this has changed over the years, but I wouldn't bet on it).
The moral of the story... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE [youtube.com]
How?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Man in the middle?
Just wait for the user to download some new program or updates and inject a trojan. When he runs the program, BAM!
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
Click here to win a free iPod!
Bummer, I didn't win. I guess the winner actually gets a link.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
John Doe sees a tempting link in his email, or one served up in a web page a'la Phorm [wikipedia.org], and clicks on it. This then triggers the installation of "legalized" spyware which tracks the user's communications and browsing habits.
Amazing, the kind of tools and techniques that law enforcement and sig
Re:How?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think all the above posts in this vein are wrong. The question isn't whether there are technical means for computers to be compromised en masse - botnets proved that already. The entire question is: which means will the government be willing to use. If the govt perpetrated mass infections of computers, it would certainly be detected, very likely to cause outrage, and easily remedied by anybody who really cared. So I predict they will remain more targeted in their attacks. The whole key to unregulated powers is to use them against a small minority so the majority don't get upset and start getting regulations passed. (Of course, that minority might not be criminals - they might be political opponents etc).
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
More like: Click here to win a free Zune
It's the government, and they're terribly out of touch you know...
In other news, the Tories are now the party of the left in the UK.
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, our spy program was foiled by Microsoft DRM!
Re:How?? (Score:5, Informative)
Methods mentioned in the article include:
quietly breaking in physically and installing a keylogger, parking up nearby and breaking in via the wireless, or sending a trojan via email.
This gives them email, browsing history, local documents, and presumably other information going forward.
They also have the capability under the RIP act to intercept emails, web-traffic and other 'net use via a tap at the ISP itself.
All of this without any court oversight or warrants. But they'll only do it if a senior police officer believes it's necessary to gather evidence of a crime carrying a sentence greater than 3 years.
Well, that's alright then! as long as a policeman is suspicious of me, that's a perfectly good enough reason to remove all court oversight of police intrusion into my private life!
Jesus.
Re:How?? (Score:5, Interesting)
meh, court oversight doesn't do anything anyway. The courts are happy to rubber stamp any search warrant where there is reasonable expectation that evidence might be found. And if the police find nothing? Oh, there's no oversight on that. Around 1998 I had police knock on my door and seize my computers because they had obtained a warrant on the grounds that I had spoken online with someone who had hacked into a national ISP via a corporate phone conference line, running up their bills. The police had reason to believe that they might find evidence of his crime on my computers. As such, I was required to suffer the inconvenience of having my hardware forfeit for months while they investigated. In the end they found nothing and, after much harassing on my part, eventually returned the hardware. No apology, no oversight.
Re:How?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
As long as they are quiet when they physically break in, I'm ok with it.
Invasion of privacy is one thing, but loud noise I will not tolerate.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the biggest problem with how the legal system works today. It is no longer functioning in line with how society works.
As far as the legal system is concerned, except in extreme circumstances (eg. you're suspected of violent crime) you may continue to go about your life more-or-less as per normal between arrest and court appearance and no punishment is meted out unless and until you are found guilty.
If your livelihood depends on something they've taken for evidence - well,
Re:How?? (Score:5, Funny)
I believe they crawl in through the tubes.
Re:How?? (Score:5, Interesting)
[tinfoil-hat]The annual free tax utility software CDs from the Revenue[/tinfoil-hat]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The "How?" portion is an important question. The article mentions getting access to someone's hard drive, which is a very specific form of hacking. They specifically mention sending a malware email attachment and using keyloggers (hardware/software is not clear.)
The method really does make a very significant difference. If the malware email is the primary method then that limits successful hacks to those with hopelessly outdated email clients and people who open attachments that they shouldn't. Effectivel
sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
so it seems that 1984 only got the year wrong after all. unfortunately the fear and paranoia in the public's mind is only going to fuel more of this ridiculous nonsense.
Re:sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Bear in mind, when the RIP act first came into force, only the police and security services had rights under it to perform such things as covert suveillance, and retrieve your email and phone records without a warrant. Now those powers have been devolved to all sorts of bodies, including local councils - which has led to a council covertly following a 4 year old to see if she actually lived in the cachement area of a local school (and so was eligable to attend), and another getting email and phone records to investigate a case of illegal rubbish dumping - all without warrants.
How long before local government and other civic bodies have the right to send me a trojan via email, or break into my wireless to investigate an accusation of some petty civil offence without a warrant?
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
The real question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
from their point of view it is, in the US and presumably the UK the constitution would say otherwise but since when do any of them bother following their constitutions? They can get away with this nonsense because not enough people are fighting it and too many people think "well only terrorists and other criminals should be afraid." The thing to keep in mind is that once you can justify unconstitutional acts against criminals there isn't too much standing between that position and "lets violate everyone's civil rights."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
kin a manner of speaking... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk_constitution [wikipedia.org]
Re:The real question (Score:5, Informative)
Under the RIP act, no. 2 years in jail for refusing to hand your encryption keys over upon demand, as long as the police have a reasonable suspicion that you have them. If you're accused of child-porn or terrorism offences, it goes up to 5 years for refusing to hand over your keys.
Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
Identity theft has risen sharply in the UK in recent years, as it has globally. A specific example include people cloning or stealing car number plates so they can drive in the London congestion charge zone without paying, and somebody else gets the fines.
Government advice? Spend a significant sum replacing our number plates with ones that break if they're removed, or pay credit-insurance in case our financial details are stolen.
I'm sure it's occured to the government that people are starting to use identity theft more to avoid detection. They just use that as an excuse to pass ever-more draconian laws allowing them to dig into your private-life ever deeper without warrants; in case, you know, you're a terrorist.
Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
Has it occured to anyone else that with all of the surveillance and tracking going on in the UK that they might simply make certain crimes, like say identity theft, more attractive without really reducing the overall amount of crime or catching those who are actually responsible?
Well, my first thought was that it's only a matter of time until they learn that part of the rise in identity theft is because some of the cops are setting up profitable businesses on the side, subletting their access to citizens' computers to the identity thieves.
Have there been any cases like this in the UK yet? I'd expect that they are happening now, but the information may not be public yet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A direct consequence of this is that it only takes one (or more?) people in law enforcement to believe that you try to keep something from them to be sentenced two or five years prison.
No one will ever know it if you just forgot the password.
Have you ever forgotten a password?
Re:The real question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or rather, the criminals that they've noticed are dumb enough to be noticed. Plenty of smart criminals have gotten away with things for years and years, and I don't doubt that many go completely undetected.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed it is. Though we don't have 'probable cause' in the UK, here's the wording of the act (section 49). I'm slightly incorrect though; I should have said 'reasonable belief'
If any person with the appropriate permission under Schedule 2 believes, on reasonable grounds
(a) that a key to the protected information is in the possession of any person,
(b) that the imposition of a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information is -
(i) necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3), or
(ii) nece
Just don't use Microsoft operating systems. (Score:4, Funny)
Simple.
In other news, *foreign* governments are 'stepping up' hacking of UK submarines and warships installed with Windows [msdn.com] :P
Time to hack into Blair's PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally!
It is time we hack the cabinet ministers home PCs and publish the information in slashdot.
After all they too are "residents".
+1 Methodology (Score:5, Funny)
Really? The recommended methodology of the police is the same as that used by opportunistic criminals to steal credit card information, that the police warn about?
C'mon, it's just impossible to satirize this kind of thing. It's not fair.
They Cannot Have it Both Ways (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenBSD, at least on your firewall and until they make it illegal to run anything but M$-Windows.
The latter is NOT a joke, but a prediction, given how "in bed" the UK government is with Microsoft.
won't help (Score:3, Informative)
OpenBSD won't help a hardware keylogger. Of course its easily spotted but how often do you check the back of your pc?
Re:won't help (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So the question is: (Score:4, Insightful)
it would be quite better if the resisdents of the UK did boot these scumbags out on their arse but I bet like the US at least a third of them are foolish enough to give their government that kind of power... the "only terrorists are against this massive spying" rhetoric is far too prevelant for the average joe to successfully fight this nonsense and the politicians who suggested this nonsense.
Re:Calm down, people...! (Score:5, Funny)
It's only a newspaper story. It's confused as to whether the Home Office are operating this power or talking about it.
Just so. What's particularly suspicious is that although they have a quote from Liberty about this, there doesn't seem to be anything about it on Liberty's website -- this should be front-page news for them. In fact, the last thing Liberty has on the subject is this [liberty-hu...hts.org.uk] from last year, in which the European Court of Human Rights ruled that RIP was a violation of human rights and that the UK was obliged to add more transparency and accountability.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just the fact that the Brits monitor their citizens every move and still can't do shit about the crime rate should be enough proof that th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that The Times should be called Times of London to clarify matters to people who have a newspaper who has borrowed the name, you probably also rename your fonts to Times of London New Roman.
That The Times has been The Times since 1788, generations before your local copycat newspaper, is of no importance to you?
Heck, while we're at it, why not demand that the British call Jersey "Jersey, the Channel Island" too, because New Yorkers sometimes refer to New Jersey as just Jersey?
New York Times is n
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My keyboard speaks SSL and my computer only trusts its cert. Any keylogger is useless against my keyboard because the data is encrypted in the middle and I would be warned if anyone was intercepting the data.
Well, It doesn't really but it's not such a bad idea given the current arms race between gumbiments with their power lust and the otherwise innocent people who they want to spy on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Why the hell do the British trust their gov't so much?"
Many don't. But what do you suggest they do about it? The current government was elected by 22% of voters, so even with the vast majority not voting for them they got enough seats in Parliament to push through any authoritarian measures they choose.
The smart people are getting the hell out of the UK before the doors are closed.