British police to routinely hack into PCs without a warrant.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece

by raganwald • 18 years ago

25 18 18 years ago

timesonline.co.uk

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Man, what's going on with the UK? This is straight out of 1984. See also:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388300

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=334321

m0nty2• 18 years ago

Unfortunately, people have forgotten what the thin end of a wedge looks like. Example: the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 provided that security personnel at the level of "Chief Inspector of Police" or above could provide authorisation to monitor communications for the prevention of "serious crime or terrorism."

Actual legislation, as it now stands: officials in town halls up and down the country use the same powers with little oversight, to monitor people for offences as trivial as lying on their school application form, fly-tipping and (soon) minor traffic misdemeanours such as parking on a yellow line.

Unfortunately, we're not alone: this is an EU measure, and other countries such as India, Australia and the US are, let's face it, just as culpable and opposed to genuine online freedom.

BTW, I'd like to see them use these techniques (virus-laden emails, key-loggers, wireless hacking) to get into any sufficiently tech-savvy user's computer.

dfranke2• 18 years ago

Key loggers can be tough to beat. While getting a software key-logger past me would be laborious (set BIOS password-reset jumper on motherboard, enable CD boot in BIOS, boot from rescue CD, figure out my RAID settings so you can mount my root partition, install key-logger and kernel rootkit to hide the process, restore what my desktop looked like so that I don't notice), it's pretty likely that I wouldn't notice a physical one before it was too late.

axod2• 18 years ago

Once Labour get kicked out things will return to sanity.

Do bear in mind how the media does like to massively overblow and exaggerate everything though.

abstractbill• 18 years ago

Once Labour get kicked out things will return to sanity.

Unfortunately I doubt it. That's exactly what we all said when we kicked the Tories out.

dazzawazza• 18 years ago

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."

russell• 18 years ago

I often read Charles Stross's blog (good SF writer, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html) and he comments about the big brother tactics of the British police. In addition the British don't have the same guarantees of privacy and freedom of speech that we do in the US. You can be successfully sued for libel even if what you say is true. A British citizen can be sued for a posting even if the server is in another country. Scary.

graemep• 18 years ago

Anyone can be sued for libel in Britain for any content that is read by even one person in Britain.

Rachel Ehrenfeld was successfully sued in Britain by Khalid bin Mahfouz for writing Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, a book that was never published in Britain. 23 copies had been shipped to Britain by online booksellers, which was enough for Britain to claim jurisdiction.

British libel law also makes web hosts, printers, bookshops etc. liable, so it is very easy to get anything out of circulation by going after the weak link in the chain: that is how Alisher Usmanov go Craig Murray's blog taken down withot actually Murray himself.

zandorg• 18 years ago

This is a good time for me to point out the RIP Human Intelligence Sources Code of Practi(c/s)e. This is a PDF which details the secret police who have the power to do a lot of stuff. You can find it on Google.

It's atrocious, and nobody knows about it, it's hidden away in a PDF.

seano• 18 years ago

Why the hysteria? This is a useful tool in detecting and preventing serious crimes in the modern world. I think it's a good thing.

lliiffee• 18 years ago

without a warrant. Certainly I want to police to be able to search people's homes if they are likely to commit serious crimes. However, I don't want the police to be able to search my home with out some sort of evidence that I have done something improper. Similarly, I consider the data on my computer private. I think that history suggests that the government cannot be trusted to use authority responsibly unless there is some sort of system in place to guarantee that it uses its authority responsibly. That system is called warrants.

British police to routinely hack into PCs without a warrant.

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