Australian Police Given Power To Use Spyware

reek writes "An Australian newspaper has reported> that the contentious Surveillance Devices Act has been passed. The act will (according to the article) allow Federal Police to obtain warrants to secretly install spyware onto users computers enabling them to "monitor email, online chats, word processor and spreadsheets entries and even bank personal identification numbers and passwords.""

Comments

what's the big deal?

[SoupGuru]

The Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant to use software surveillance technologies

As long as they need to obtain a warrant first, I don't see the big deal.

Re:what's the big deal?

[Shadow Wrought]

Exactly. As long as due process is followed it is in the same realm as a wire tap or bug. It is when the due process bit is removed that we need to start worrying.

Re:what's the big deal?

[Telastyn]

I was going to post the same thing, until I realised that there's a subtle distinction. Phone tap warrants [to my knowledge] don't actually do anything to the alledged criminal's property. They place the tap at the CO, and listen in. Once the info leaves the ownership of the alledged criminal it's fair game [like their trash].

Actual property search warrants [to my knowledge] require the alledged criminal to be issued the warrant, and present for the search. The info in the computer though [assuming no internet connection] stays in the computer. Placing a keylogger on the machine without informing the owner seems to be a special circumstance to get around age old search warrant law.

It'd be much better if it limited the spying to internet connections.

[disclaimer: I am not austrailian, and I am not a lawyer, some assumptions might be wrong, and render the arguement moot.]

Re:Someone please tell me...

[pla]

Someone please tell me ... that having software that (knowingly or unknowingly) blocks or removes this spyware isn't a crime...

Well, of course it would count as a crime! Probably as simple as "tampering with evidence", but it wouldn't surprise me if they invented a special category of crime, over which we have no control, to deal with (for example) AdAware detecting and removing such software.

But... Why on Earth would you want to remove it?

Just fake it out, and you have carte blanche to commit whatever crimes you want, with the state's own "evidence" of your whereabouts to clear you at any given time...

"And how do you suppose my client committed this crime, when your own activity logs show him viewing... Um... homoerotic goat porn??? at the time of the crime?"


As an aside relating back to my first paragraph, I personally run AntiVir for precisely that reason... As a German company, they treat a US government sponsored virus (such as the FBI's Magic Lantern) the same as any other virus - Namely, they detect it, quarrantine it, and kill it. Unlike both Norton and Mcafee, which have publically stated that they will not detect any virii such as ML.

Re:Someone please tell me...

[LiquidCoooled]

If they have a warrant, and access to your computer, what the fuck are they messing around keeping it running for anyway, why haven't they just arrested you?

There is no secret piece of cross platform software available that can give 100% systeminfo without detection and be transparent to a clued up user.
There are however 100s of Windows only programs that can get so far inside the backdoor that even goatse is jealous, and STILL not be detected by a user ("Oh it was running a bit slow" they say as you nod slowly and sip your coffee whilst waiting for Adaware to finish its scan.)

btw, im a Windows user, not Linux - I merely pointed out the usual flaw in the plan.

What's wrong with the UK and Australia?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Now this spyware issue, the banning ceremonial swords and toy guns, crime rates rising, and the security camera epidemic. How much freedom are the citizens of these countries willing to give up?

Re:A Good Thing?

[jc42]

So it's now illegal in the UK to possess a street map of London?

After all, such a map could be very useful to a terrorist intent on terrorizing some place.

I was over there a few months back, and I saw lots of street maps for sale at the airport. I wonder if those vendors have been arrested yet?