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UK Cops Want "Breathalyzers" For PCs
An anonymous reader writes "One of the UK's top cyber cops, detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, says the top brass want to develop the equivalent of a breathalyzer for computers, a simple tool that could be plugged into a machine during a raid and retrieve evidence of illegal activity. McMurdie said the device was needed because of a record number of PCs were being seized by police and because the majority of cops don't have the skills to forensically analyse a computer."
So they want GOV spyware? They will still need people to look at the data.
That's pretty much like building a mind-reader to figure out if a person has ever committed a crime. Good luck with that.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Won't that only work with alcohol cooled systems?
Steganography, encryption, log erasing, etc. There is no 'out of the box' solution. Every computer is going to require a computer forensics team to go over it unless the OS manufacturer builds in those tools. And you can guarantee that NO manufacturer wants people to know that anyone can just open up your system via a backdoor at anytime.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Because it's painfully clear your don't understand computer forensics either.
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The next inevitable step for the UK gov't will be to outlaw using encryption on personal computers, because it's "too hard" to break.
This isn't a slippery slope for the UK anymore, it's a landslide, rushing down the mountain, annihilating everything in its way.
Sad.
Combine this with a remote access software, and you don't even need to enter a person's home to scan their PC for files anymore. Forget all this pesky due process for warrants and investigation, we can now scan tens of thousands of computers every day and just fish idly for perps. All done without even needing to look at your screen while the software does the dirty work for you.
1) Hide a remotely detonatable explosive device in your computer /b/
2) Write a script to automatically crawl 4chan's
3) Be somewhere else when the party van arrives
4) KABOOM!
5) Nelson from the Simpsons would then usually say "ha-ha!" but he's locked up on child porn charges because he posted his own nudes on the internet.
Top brass also wants a date with Scarlett Johansson. And a pony for each officer on the force.
I figure the odds are about the same for each.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
There is going to be a large amount of demand for "Computer Forensics Specialist" in the near future. Too bad the majority of them are going to go to devry thinking they're going to learn everything they need to.
What next, a breathalyser for paedophiles? Murderers? Terrorists? Why does not the UK police use that money to train their people or hire new specialists instead of trying to build a perpetuum mobile? Any criminal worth spending this project's money on is savvy enough to fully encrypt his hard disk. If they are so dumb not to encrypt compromising data, any cop with a few hours of training could find it. So what is this project really aiming at?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
It costs too much money for the Police to pay quality IT Forensics folks. The police want a simple green, yellow, or red light that the police can follow, that is closed source and has it's AI written by policy makers to decide what is legal or questionable.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
The scary thing about this is that it doesn't matter if it works right, it just matters if it gets certified and approved for use as that what it claims it is. And that could just happen.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
I really think this is the same mentality that eventually comes to see individual rights and due process as pesky "inefficiencies" that only interfere with "real police work". They seriously need to tell new police recruits that their job is not easy and is not supposed to be easy. If any of them don't like that they should also be told where the exits are.
I think this is another example of relatively well-meaning people who fail to comprehend how dangerous their intentions are because they don't think them through. Let's say there is a device that can be plugged into a PC (maybe the USB port?) and almost instantly tell you whether it has illegal content with no need for expert analysis. Yeah I know that I should also posit the existence of the tooth fairy but bear with me. Who makes this device? How trustworthy are they? Do competitors or other rivals oddly happen to have a higher percentage of "illegal" PCs? Is the device a black box or can the average person examine and scrutinize it? If the cops already don't have the staff or the expertise to perform forensic analysis on PCs, what's our guarantee that they will correctly use this device or that they can offer any sort of assurance that the way it is used won't violate anyone's civil rights? What's to prevent criminals from obtaining one (by whatever means) and making sure that their illegal data isn't where this thing is looking? If I can think of this in a few minutes, WTF are these people smoking that they consider this a serious proposal? Or do they simply not care about these concerns?
You know what you'll probably never see? The police "top brass" asking for a device to help make sure that their officers don't violate anyone's civil rights and that they follow all the laws concerning due process.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'll just use a hot glue gun to seal up all of my usb ports and use ps/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard.
fuzz: HOLY SHIT! THIS GUY MUST BE SOME SORT OF UBER_HACKER!!!
me: Too fucking right. Now you piggies hurry on back to the donut shop or I'll make your cruiser drive you down to the gay district on autopilot with YMCA blaring from the radio. (holds hands up over head, makes "whoooooooooing" scary sound, wiggles fingers menacingly)
fuzz: BETTER TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY! HE COULD DO IT!!
me: Heh. Wankers.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
When I read the headline, I thought they literally meant a breathalyzer, to keep drunk people off PCs. I could probably use one, it would cut down on the drunk IMs and facebook posts.
Forget a tool for computers. We need a tool like this for physical crime scenes. You know: something that would, like, scan crime scenes and find, like, relevant DNA evidence and shit. It could even have an option where it would print out an arrest warrant with the name of the murderer on it.
Her day job is architect of the UK's Police Central E-crime Unit, so it might be a bit late for that.
Having said that, I get the distinct impression from RTFA that this is pie-in-the-sky "this is the sort of tool we'd like in an ideal world, not that it's even remotely practical" rather than something that's in active development:
said frontline police ideally need a digital forensic tool as easy to use as the breathalyser, to help them deal with growing numbers of computers being seized during raids on suspects' homes
Yep, and I bet they'd like a machine which they can just turn on, punch in details of an unsolved crime and bingo! it tells you the perpetrators name, address, telephone number, the car they drive, their plans for the next 48 hours and where sufficient evidence to obtain a conviction can be found. It's fairly obvious from the article that whatever qualification this woman has, none of them involve technology.
"Reasonable suspicion" is the key phrase here.
If the cop stops you for running a red light and sees something suspicious then he can go further.
But stopping you for one thing does NOT give them the authority to check for everything they can think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_suspicion
the majority of cops don't have the skills to forensically analyse a computer
The majority of cops doesn't even have the skills to find my computer halfway up the old chimney;P However, I'm looking forward to the day they have to work their way through my massive computer-cemetery;->
0x or or snor perron?!
As other posters have noted, cyber fraud is hard to prove, since the evidence it leaves behind (data, transactions, account numbers) looks so much like legal commerce. It takes a lot of smart work by educated professionals to prove the difference.
Now you know one of the reasons that the police like drug laws so much: The key facts can be understood and collected by an officer with an IQ of 80 and just a couple months of training.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
It's in the goddamn rfc, they HAVE to follow it. What are you, from Microsoft?
I think people misunderstand the nature of law enforcement in the UK (and elsewhere)
1) we have LOTS of laws
2) Every one is guilty of something
3) The police know that you are guilty
4) At the moment they have to specify what of.
The primary strategy is to try and remove requirement ( 4) but an automated identification of your special crime would be a big help.
Yes, generally anything that is encountered during the course of a lawful search (even if for something else) is admissable. Sure, cops can't go paw the drawer next to your bed looking for a stolen TV but the problem is how this is understood by the courts.
In particular this rule is understood to mean that if the police open your safe looking for a stolen laptop the papers inside would be admissible in court. In other words once the police have cause to look inside a container you own they can examine the contents at their leisure, they need not immediately cease looking the second it's apparent the subject of their warrant isn't present. Now if you had a locked jewelery box inside that safe they likely wouldn't be able to examine the contents if it was outside the scope of the original warrant but the problem is when you try to map this notion onto that of a computer.
In particular it turns out that case law so far has endorsed the idea that the computer is just one big container. Maybe things would be different if you had an encrypted volume on the computer but in general once they have reason to examine your computer for one thing they can examine everything.
In fact the standard practice in the US is to seize your computer and have their experts perform a low level clone of the disk the second they have any reason to search your computer. Moreover, since the 4th ammendment and past case law is grounded in the notions of physical searches and seizures there is no framework for restricting what they can use the HD clone for once it's been made (well privacy laws might prevent them from disclosing your cybersex logs but that's about it)
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Do you have the courage that Number 6 had? Will you fight back against Number 2?
Are you just "A number" or are you Free Men & Women?
The choice is yours.
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I'm just waiting for the day when a botnet herder decides to find out the answer to the question of "what will the government do when *everyone* is a criminal?"... and malware sends a "care package" to 1,000,000+ computers, consisting of illegal content {child porn / whatever) - then reports the IP addresses to the authorities.
If the sort of people who ran botnets were the sort of people who want better laws and police, that would happen. I rather think that is the last thing they want.
What is more likely (if it is not happening already) is that more targeted hacks are being used to plant material on computers, hidden where are non-knowledgeable user would not easily find it, and then blackmailing them. A few files could be placed in open view to prove that the threat was real - or perhaps a random illegal image could be popped up at intervals to keep the pressure up.
Most people would be too scared to get help, and would roll over.
A lot of "common sense" powers have had to be denied to police, because they've proven themselves incapable of not abusing them. Every counter-intuitive restriction placed on government officials can be traced to an incident of abuse so horrific, that society opted to "tie the hands" of everyone rather than entrust anyone with that power any longer. Really, it takes quite a lot for anyone in government to advocate a limit on governmental powers.
I was watching cops (not a regular viewer but was being sociable) and saw a cop search a car claiming a "furtive gesture" as probable cause. I could hardly believe it, here was a guy who knew he was being filmed who apparently decided that showing his ability to get around the need for a warrant was going to be taken as a good thing by viewers. What sticks with me isn't the injustice of it all, it was that a potential jury of peers sitting around watching TV seemed to support the action.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.