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European Police Plan to Remote-Search Hard Drives

Posted by timothy on from the oh-you-needn't-come-into-the-office dept.

Smivs points out a blandly-worded story from the BBC with scary implications, excerpting "Remote searches of suspect computers will form part of an EU plan to tackle hi-tech crime. The five-year action plan will take steps to combat the growth in cyber theft and the machines used to spread spam and other malicious programs. It will also encourage better sharing of data among European police forces to track down and prosecute criminals. Europol will co-ordinate the investigative work and also issue alerts about cyber crime sprees."

4 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Re:how how how? by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    how would this work?

    Please see my earlier post regarding this...apparently, they plan to infect your system with a remote access Trojan.

    But don't worry...it's for your own good.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. Re:yeah by Smauler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A grey hat in his basement can give me a trojan, perhaps fuck up my computer. The government can send hordes of armed men round to my house and lock me up for the rest of my life. Although I do probably trust the government more than some random, I know which one I am more scared of.

  3. You just moved the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Because the minix kernel doesn't do squat useful. So you need an application to do that. And the application will need to be bigger, more monolothic and easier to pwn like this because you haven't got the capability in the kernel.

    Nice job.

  4. Re:Summary is confused as usual by cicho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You are wrong. First, because yes, people will risk their careers to snoop on the privacy of total strangers, just because they can. Since they work in secrecy, it's even debatable if they feel their careers at at risk for doing so: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5987804

    Second, because as alarming as the linked story is, privacy is ultimately not about the police reading your shopping list. It's always about money - the money someone is willing to pay to access personal data on a political opponent (to discredit her or him), a dissident group (to penetrate and spy on them), or a competing business (obvious).

    Therefore, it's also about human rights.

    Once the technology is available, it *will* be abused, and we know this, because such abuses have always happened. I don't know of a government (or a business) that had a technology available and decided not to use it because doing so would be unethical or even illegal. How many times must the same stories repeat before we learn?

    --
    "Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan