Slashdot Mirror
UK Police To Step Up Hacking of Home PCs
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."
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=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Hack into people's PC? How do they do that, and what do they get out of it?
You just got troll'd!
enough said.
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.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
enough said.
When your government is hacking you, is it illegal to lock them out?
So that's how my World of Warcraft account had all the gold stolen off it.
They might find find c:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\stash\Orwell\Nineteen Eighty-Four.pdf, they might send the book publisher's association after her!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Simple.
In other news, *foreign* governments are 'stepping up' hacking of UK submarines and warships installed with Windows :P
you had me at #!
Finally!
It is time we hack the cabinet ministers home PCs and publish the information in slashdot.
After all they too are "residents".
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
OpenBSD won't help a hardware keylogger. Of course its easily spotted but how often do you check the back of your pc?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
the fortune at the bottom of my page reads: "What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock"
which is just the tip of the iceberg of what could possibly be wrong about these powers...
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
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.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
It is not possible to allow the "good guys" only to have access to secure operating systems and security technologies such as encryption while simultaneously locking the "bad guys" out. The British government will have to decide what is more important, providing secure online banking, shopping, and other electronic services as part of operating in a modern economy OR hobbling the information economy with restrictions to catch a few more low-level or careless "bad guys" at the expense of even more loss of privacy for millions of ordinary British citizens and substantial encumbrance of legitimate economic activity involving computers, the Internet, and other "sensitive" technologies. If it is easy for the police to "hack in" then it is easy for the spammers, terrorists, or anyone else to "hack in" as well. The British reaction always seems to be, "We ought to have a law against that!" instead of simply acceptating that bad things will sometimes happen despite the best laid plans or intentions and moving on with "acceptable risks" in an open society.
The UK has a constitution?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Just get her to sign the treaty.
It's only a newspaper story. It's confused as to whether the Home Office are operating this power or talking about it.
There are huge problems with 'hacking' a system, or any kind of secret evidence gathering. Typically the data gathered cannot be used in a court, since the police could just as easily have placed data on your system as read it.
I would guess that this is yet one more internal push from the Security Service (who don't know the first thing about court evidence) to justify their budgets by saying that they could use burglary and hacking to gather data about criminals, in the same way as they used to do in the 1960s with Russian agents. The UK government is in awe of the Security Service (probably because they know where so many bodies are hidden) and will generally let them do anything. Bit like Homeland Security, really...
Would our society be safer or more dangerous if instead of listening to these lunatics, we barred them from politics for life for even suggesting such a disgusting measure?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
there is no such newspaper as the "Times of London", it is just "The Times" and a proper edit of the summary would be in order.
Jonathanjk.com
I am amazed as how the democratic countries are letting down their values and converging to the dark world of ...
That is a shame!
It's ironic that the State always wants to encourage terrorism by making people want to revolt. There is no doubt that there will be many more home grown Timothy McVeigh's in the future.
about privacy issues in the United States, but at least we're still nowhere near anything like that yet.
'Impossible' is a word that humans use far too often. -- Seven of Nine
The governments don't even bother to lie to us anymore it's just plain animosities. Its about time we took back our societies and show these greedy bastards who's boss.
... lets give it to them!!!1!^1...
... where is everybody going? F$%"& cowards.
Them's fightin' words
Hey
It is important to explain to people you know, in a calm and educated sounding manner, not in a manner that makes you look like some kind of right wing nut, why these sorts of things are all steps towards a Big Brother state, and why it is important that they do their part to convince the people they know of the same. All throughout the world, we need to vote out the incumbent members of government offices and vote in new people who want to reduce the amount of government involvement in our lives, not increase it. When new laws accumulate on the books every day, sooner or later you will not be able to do anything. Therefore it is time to vote people into office who will remove laws from the books, simplify the government, reduce the government's budget (and in doing so, reducing taxation), and reduce government surveillance of the people.
This is not the UK it is the joke EU police state.
If we don't get involved in our system it will happen here.
Don't believe the lies the slaves in the UK are not in favor of it.
council of ministers passed such a rule? is the UK the 1st to take advantage of this newfound freedom or are other member nations also partaking?
has the UK's government done anything in the last 12 months that has fortified civil liberties? all i can think of are more horror stories of Parliament's haphazard treatment of civil liberty.
"To stop the terrorists."
as long as they it is legal to hack into the UK Police Computers. They should have no problems, what do they have to hide?
Ladies and Gentelman. Time to build an industrial strength firewall/intrusion detection system. Check out pf, the innovation from OpenBSD. That'll make it significantly harder to penetrate
"But again, truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror."
I used to think V for Vendetta was fiction. It's starting to look like a documentary.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I think it might be time for people to encrypt their systems. Linux makes that easy. I think Windows does too. I'd rather trust Linux, though.
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.
this is bullshit, why would we stand for this?
I know it's tradition to not RTFA, but you could at least read your own article.
The Republik Of Amerika! No more rights for the people! Bushitler!
I'm moving to the UK!
I'm, uh...
Why the hell do the British trust their gov't so much? Perhaps they have yet to be burned by the likes of Nixon, McCarthy, and J. Edgar Hoover? Please explain this one.
Table-ized A.I.
google's hit of the week in the UK is the word 'honeypot'.
Somehow I think some criminal rings are just waiting for the authorities to hack into their booby-trapped PCs to upload some specially designed packages to infect the intruder.
Considering that more and more of the human endeavour is taking place in cyberspace, and eventually pretty much nothing of interest will happen in meatspace alone... this is a disturbing precedent giving free run for governments to spy on everything you do. Its worrying that the public doesn't grasp the gravity of the situation.
What the real problem is, once liberty is given away it's very very hard to get back.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.
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....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Yeah, that's true I believe they do have something like that. Time to use a multi-layered crypto container in that case and only let them into the outer layer. You will still only be protected if they haven't gotten access to it while YOU are using it...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"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 making these kinds of value judgments on their citizen-patients.
Not that I endorse that kind of thinking, or their nationalized health care systems... I most definitely don't. But I'm curious as to why you're a critic of their system.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The latter is NOT a joke, but a prediction, given how "in bed" the UK government is with Microsoft.
Well, you are turning your Trident missile subs over to something called ""Windows for Submarines". We don't have much room to mock you here in the colonies though, because apparently our new class of aircraft carrier will use a version of W2K3 server as well.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It this real or just some paranoia to scare stupid people?
What are they going to do when anti-malware programs and firewalls do their job and block them? It would be like they say they are going to start searching peoples houses... but breaking into a PC isn't like breaking into a house. Maybe they break the firewall, then what? They crack my password? Good luck...
And do you know what? The people they will hack easily will be the people with nothing to hide... I guess they will then say if they can't hack you you are hiding something? I'm glad I live in the US where you don't have to worry about stuff like thi$##$ CARRIER LOST
Are we really sure we *can* stop them? (/tinfoilhat)
I chop ten gallons (two bucket fulls in other words) a day scrap vegetables for my small flock using a machete. Not only efficient, but great sport! whackwhackwhackwhackwhack, big fun! I dice it up small for them then scatter it around, they love it. And ya, it's the best for watermelons, clean full slices with one chop. But when it comes time to clean a clucker to eat, back to pointy knives.
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).
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
You totally don't address the point of the post that you reply to, which is that for every restriction of things which yes, we should not "just accept", there is a price to society which may not be worthwhile.
We understand you approve of making large sharp kitchen knives illegal. What is your stance on darts, which are fairly easy to poison? Do you think that the British public would be in favor of outlawing darts if they started to be used as murder weapons?
I would also think that cable ties would be very effectively used as garrotes, no?
Oh, do you think that my posting an analysis of what might be effective murder weapons is also something which should be restricted?
Do you understand, now, the real meaning of the post to which you replied?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Or did they already do that when joining the UK police force?
Remember those nerds? you crappy loosers kicking those pesky little nerds at the schoolyard?
What the hell is wrong with this crap government? There is no democracy, this is dictatorship, they dictate what you can and cannot read,write,comprehend unless it has been bended into a shape they want you to know.
Why isn't there anyone standing up like the piracy people in Denmark huh?
If this was a democracy, than the people that have been chosen, can be put back in there closet for acting and behaving like these twats in Brussels...
I hope they read my shitty toilet paper that is flushing down this very moment. I hope they like it... and when you are down there, stay in those sewers you morons.
Where is freedom? Who was that person that wrote this:"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet'"
If I'd had the skills I'd blew up those machines in the UK... And _I_ hope that they are reading this.
They didn't even let you make a copy of your data?
My sympathies. I live in Singapore. If this happens to me, I'm moving elsewhere.
Of course, I'd need to start making backups and hiding them. I'm not going to let my 15 years of documents be lost permanently due to some "professional" high up not doing their job properly.
Being able to criminalize everyone gives a tremendous amount of leverage for any oppressive government as well as the ability for endless blackmail racket to its "insiders."
Given that police have been known to plant evidence, anything found in this will have two defences.
1) The police may have planted it
2) The police witnesses will have to testify that anyone with the right skills and access to the internet could have used this computer to store data.
That goes a long way towards giving reasonable doubt, and unless they have other evidence I think it would be a risky prosecution.
Outside of UK it IS often referred to as London "Times".
From Wikipedia:
The Times is the original "Times" newspaper, lending its name to many other papers around the world, such as The New York Times, The Times of India, and The Irish Times. For specificity it is sometimes referred to outside of (though never within) the UK as the London Times or The Times of London. The paper is the originator of the ubiquitous Times New Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
First, let me say that I don't like this at all - it is not right, simply. Never mind civil liberties - this is about respect for people and of course the self-respect of our authorities; you just don't sneak around like that, that's something criminals do.
But let us not lose our heads over this. The state already have the power to do far more than anybody would like, if they were to abuse it; this has always been the case, and I suspect it always will. Living in a society means trusting each other, including the ones in power; and of course, if the government breaches that trust, public order will break down.
What makes this move feel so wrong is the fact that they sneak it in; there is no need to do it that way. I am sure most people will be far more able to accept things like this if they are introduced openly and discussed in public. It's a bit like asking for permission - like, if my neighbor asks if he can borrow my lawn mower, I would probably say yes; but I would be seriously pissed off if he just sneaks in and takes it in the night.
This combines very nicely for them with the UK law that came into force on Jan 1st making it a criminal offense to have images on your hard drive depicting various 'extreme' acts for pornographic purposes. Note: these acts don't have to be actually carried out, let alone non-consensual, just look like it. They don't even need to be photos - drawings will do.
You can't expect someone to be able to decrypt all the contents of their computer, it's just a totally unrealistic expectation.
I have dozens of gigabytes of stored data that isn't mine, hence I cannot be expected to decrypt it.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
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.
Hah! I've just come up with a new trick, though I doubt I'm anywhere near the first to think of it. To protect content you could just disguise the encrypted files as DRM-protected media. It receives much better protection in most places nowadays than any other encrypted content and media files can plausibly take up a lot of space. Big brother may not hesitate to bully you but they'll think twice if they think the /..AA/ might get involved.
The RIPA act http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/ripa/ makes it an offence to NOT disclose passwords when required, by the law enforcement agencies of this country. Non disclosure is punishable by up two years imprisonment!
I never use the pointy end at all.
If it was a curved blunt bit, it wouldnt hurt me.
But why not just lock up the lunatic crims for 50 years or send em to china boot camps.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
A career in the police certainly sounds interesting. Just think, the freedom to hack into the computers of MP's such as Jacqui Smith and find no end of material that would no doubt allow legal action against her.
Oh wait, what's that? MPs are immune to snooping laws? One rule for them and all that...
If it is IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE THINGS POINTY - then how would you get a pointy knife?
What to say when you catch the old Bill in your PC !
Isn't Singapore the place where you have to smile at tourists under penalty of a fine for frowning, and to avoid chewing gum stuck on the sidewalks, they made chewing gum illegal ?
I don't think you've got that much freedom to start with ?
Can't TrueCrypt be configured with a 'destroy' password that will wipe the disk and/or destroy the encryption if given to a third party ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
XP for example offers the ability for password-protected users to encrypt their files. Couple problems with this.
1. Plenty of stuff available to crack or reset windows passwords.
2. If you cannot crack the passwrd, you have to change it, (using boot CD, for ex.). Then, according to M$, you cannot access the password-protected files, right?
Wrong - just back 'em up (using M$ backup supplied), then restore under another user account. Bingo - you've got the files. Really secure, eh?
Is it just me or is no-one going to search for a tag "georgeorwelleatyourheartout"?
When you think about how many computers are infected with malware it's not that bad of a law. Can they remove the malicious software for us also, considering it can be used for terrorist activities (there's a bit of sarcasm in this post but behind every joke is some truth).
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Yes, Singapore is pretending to be a free and democratic state, very much like the US and UK.
Never heard of the "smile at tourists" rule. Tourists (Australian backpackers) with huge backpacks often had to stand in the trains while young healthy Singaporeans hogged the seats.
The chewing gum law is correct. So is "no food or drinks on trains".
I'm not sure how much freedom we have with regards to personal data on PCs and laptops, though. At least I can ping www.gnupg.org at 217.69.76.60, right?
I doubt Mr Ploppy would be in favor of banning darts, cable ties, etc, but regardless, are you honestly advocating that its ok for kids to go around stabbing each other, as long as cooks don't have to use a different knife for poking meat than they do for cutting it? If not, and you're against taking the knives off the streets, presumably we should legalize guns and hand them out to the "good" kids to defend themselves with?
Yes, a pointy-knife ban is no magic wand, but a lot of UK cities have a serious knife crime problem amongst teenagers, and such a ban seemingly wouldn't inconvenience anyone but a few celebrity chefs. Most people agree that something has to be done, so do you have a better suggestion for combating the knife crime problem? Or would you say it shouldn't be interfered with?
You and what 0day?
There are over 36 million lines of COBOL code in the world, and they are all raping children.
I think we both know you're lying.
1. mirror drive
2. try password
3. if drive wipes itself, reload from copy
there...beat your neat little idea
Has RIPA actually been used in court yet? I'd be very surprised if the law wasn't thrown out and the evidence declared inadmissible.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
this lovely little law allows the police to send you to prison because you cant decrypt files .
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/14/ripa_encryption_key_notice/
this wont help prevent 'terrorism' because it takes such a long time to go through the legal process that anything remotely time sensitive would be of little use at the end of it.
Even if it was quicker its of no use as anyone with anything serious to hide can use deniable encryption that wouldn't be noticed or multiple layers of keys.
Maybe a good response would be to claim any politican voting for this is a terrorist and have them put in prison for having encrypted files that they cant decrypt . ssl certs should do it or maybe itunes tracks.
anyone fancy helping on this one ?
[site]
4. if drive wiped itself, charge suspect of violating RIPA by not handing over the genuine password, and get him thrown in jail regardless of the content of the drive.
I claimed that the original argument was that every time society decides to "protect" itself by making something illegal, there is a price to pay. And neither you, nor "Mr Ploppy" understood that argument.
Yes, I understand that it might be worthwhile passing laws outlawing pointy kitchen knives. I am not a member of British society, so I cannot pass judgement on that.
The original argument was "It's called free society, people die, deal with it." In other words, it is clear that it's stupid to think that society, at all costs, must prevent young people murdering each other. But I rather think you'd also agree with that, no?
I think "clucker" was the clue there.... ;)
The
The Hacker Crackdown
Steve Jackson Games
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Do you have any sources that backup your national and cultural stereotypes and your sweeping generalisations?
I won't do this, I have a young family and a home to keep up...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I read your simpering, slobbering statist drool: your BLEATING. Can't see the Gub'mnt gun eh sheeple ? It's stuck right up your azzwhole. Mebby it's too close to see and you're too accustomed to bending over ...
Screw lock them out; take them out! If they were decent hackers, they'd be doing something other than police work.
I'm very good at what I do, I don't like being bullied and I won't stand for it. Funny that, in a technological arena, the geek becomes the jock.
I welcome them show up on my stomping grounds. Full disclosure: I'm an American, but what I said applies globally.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
They still could have charged him for concealing evidence or refusing to cooperate or some other shit like that.
You know... under that famous "If you don't have anything to hide..." doctrine.
No sane person that has nothing to hide would purposely use something you need special equipment and arcane knowledge just so you could chat online, right?
Must be hiding something.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The comment's bloody funny.
I'll leave now.
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
I'm only 1/2 joking, i wonder if they are overly competent with 'hacking' OS's other then unpatched Windows installs using a bunch of commonly published scripts.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is why I have multiple computer as at home. The ones that do the pirating off movies I want to view, or download the torrent, are on the internet separately from the computer that has all my info...if I like something and want to keep it...use a usb to transfer it to the other computer without touching the internet. The only thing they might get is a history of what websites i viewed or my latest download. Aside from that, I wipe everything down, and use a nice lemon cleaner after I
am finished with my keyboard to wipe all fingerprints....jk....or am I?
I think vidalia-project can help. It bundles Privoxy and Tor with system tray icons for Windows.
Vidalia is a cross-platform controller GUI for the Tor software, ... Using Vidalia, you can start and stop the Tor software, view its status at a glance, ...
http://vidalia-project.net/
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
They didn't even let you make a copy of your data?
Nope, they quite literally burst in to the house waving the search warrant in my face, and proceeded to grab every piece of computer equipment they could find. One guy basically cornered me and "explained" the situation to me as the others went about grabbing everything (I got the feeling he was more or less "keeping me occupied" rather than any sense of trying to actually inform me of what was going on)
I'm not going to let my 15 years of documents be lost permanently
I didn't quite have 15 years worth of data at the time, but I'd say I had at least 5... and yeh, pretty much everything that my friends didn't already have a copy of was indeed lost (which of course didn't include more personal stuff such as my email archive including "first contact" emails between myself and my then girlfriend (who I still consider the love of my life even though we're no longer together)). I was VERY annoyed/upset about it as I'm sure you understand.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Another great time to re-read the excellent paper "âoeIâ(TM)VE GOT NOTHING TO HIDEâ AND OTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF PRIVACY" by Daniel J. Solove.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act allows the police to force you to hand over your password, on penalty of up to two years in prison. Clearly, if you really have done something very bad, you are going to take two years over, say, five years in a jail and a lifetime on the Sex Offenders Register.
The best way to defend yourself is to use the hidden OS feature of Truecrypt. Basically you have two operating systems installed, one which you use for innocuous stuff and one which you do all your secret stuff on. If asked for the password you give them the one for the innocent OS, and there is no way they can prove there is another hidden OS.
Of course, you also need to be very security concious, especially on Windows. Linux is better, although you still need to use a VPN (e.g. Relakks) or TOR when online.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are a few things you can do to improve physical security too. Make sure the computer is locked when not in use (or when the screensaver activates). Turn it off when you can. Disable any Firewire or PCMCIA ports as they can be used to dump the computer's RAM. If using TrueCrypt, use the function to auto-dismount encrypted volumes after a short period of inactivity, and set up a "panic button" hotkey to dismount all encrypted volumes and shut down the PC as quickly as possible.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
As long as they can't prove a thing, you can just hand them a faulty password. It is not a crime to have a hard disk filled with random garbage is it?
the obvious outcome of libertarian ideology: the rich prosper, the rest face the choice between slavery or death.
People cite this as a failing of libertarian ideology when the reality is that it is happening under our current debt-based economy to an extent much greater than libertarian policies would harbor. The current system rewards the already filthy rich, demonstrated by the continued growth of the gap between rich and poor (in the USA, anyway). The way the system is engineered, there must always be a greater amount of debt than money because all money is loaned into existence. For the very rich, this is a boon because lending money now usually results in payment with interest, increasing their wealth. For everybody else, it means that we end up buying a lot on credit and face increasing debt levels due to the same interest. And that's not even going into the hidden wealth-eroding effects of inflation that disproportionately affect the middle and lower classes: it used to be that only one source of income was needed to maintain a family; now most households require two incomes just to get by, not even increasing in net wealth.
Libertarianism is not a magic bullet that will eradicate poverty, but I submit that poverty will never be eradicated. The best we can do is to mitigate its effects on people as much as possible without causing problems for the whole society. Lots of slashdotters believe that more socialist policies are the answer to that. I personally believe that more libertarian policies and a healthy dose of community would serve us better, and further, that libertarian policies would tend to increase our sense of community. Unfortunately I cannot yet articulate this theory as well I'd like to, but the basics lie in each individual's levels of empathy, ability (including financial means), and personal responsibility. I possess a ton of empathy and a decent chunk of ability (though not financial means), but I have been pretty irresponsible because I viewed poverty as "someone else's problem." After all, the government is taking care of it, right?
It seems to me that the outcome of libertarian ideology is that the industrious prosper while the lazy face the choice between action or death*. The small number of individuals who are incapable of doing very much are cared for by their local communities and by charity organizations, much as they are today. There is decidedly less room for "slavery" in a libertarian society than in the one we have now, where many of us (myself included) are like indentured servants working to pay back the credit binge we've been on since birth.
*This has little to do with our current system, and I am not implying that if you are poor, you must be lazy.
Your brain is not a computer.
if they think there is encrypted data and you are withholding it they can have a very good go at trying to get you sent to prison.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/ripa-decryption_keys_power/
You might have noticed the growing amount of descretionary powers that fundamentally assault
our privacy , thats the war on terror/drugs/communism and you are paying for it !
[site]
El Reg debunks it here
The Times is notoriously inflammatory and unreliable, and the lack of fact-checking makes /. (plus lots of readers who fell for it, judging by the comments) look like braying sheep.
You say that right now Britain does not need guns, long may it last, but if the time comes when they are needed how long would it take to get them ?
After all, the Balkans seemed to be awash with AK47s when the people wanted to import them and it's not as if most Montenegrans were as wealthy as most Brits at the time.
Seems to me that if an when the general populace of the UK wanted suddenly to be armed, it would not have to wait long to get what it wants. A short timescale compared with the time it would take to get to that point.
Nullius in verba
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7812353.stm
I read "UK Police to Stop hacking Home PCs" and thought Yeah right...
I don't know much about Singapore, but just because they have stiff laws on what people do in public (chewing gum, drinks on trains, etc.) doesn't mean they necessarily also have oppressive laws about what you do in your own home, on your computer, etc. Maybe they're just really fanatical about keeping public areas clean.
Actually, so long as you can reach your reset button between the time your door gets kicked in and the time they push you away from the keyboard, the TrueCrypt volume won't be mounted anymore.
Whats to stop them from crossing international borders in the name of law enforcement? Industrial spying, spying on other country's citizens or even worse defense departments of other nations all in the name of law enforcement. if they have the local law on their side then extradition for crimes say in the US can not be prosecuted. Is it time to null route the whole UK on my home network ?
I think we both know you're lying.
Actually, I'm not. I have nosy housemates.
Set it up with one of those RFID key fobs - when you're out of range it stops working, dismounts, wipes ram, your choice.
Hey, when did corporations start posting here? Is that you, MC Visa?
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
Thats a bit much. I can't think of anything thats worth pursuing at all costs. Every decision has a cost, and only by careful weighing of all potential costs against any potential gains can a sensible opinion be formed.
In this case, I just happen think that the gain of saving a significant number of lives annually is well worth the cost of having to use seperate knives for poking & slicing large pieces of meat.
You can bet that I will change my point of view, on hacking, .. no moral issues there anymore, if they can do it so can we.