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?
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
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.
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...
kin a manner of speaking... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uk_constitution
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
it would be quite better if the resisdents of the UK did boot these scumbags out on their arse but I bet like the US at least a third of them are foolish enough to give their government that kind of power... the "only terrorists are against this massive spying" rhetoric is far too prevelant for the average joe to successfully fight this nonsense and the politicians who suggested this nonsense.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
What democratic countries? England? Since when is a monarchy with a storefront election scham a democracy? I'm from Germany and I can only laugh at those who believe we live in democratic societies. The only ones that do it almost right are the Swiss but their referendum approach only works because the country is so small they could actually kick their governments ass.
Just the fact that the Brits monitor their citizens every move and still can't do shit about the crime rate should be enough proof that they're blind, ignorant and just plain stupid if they think this will go on forever. Fortunately your data is pretty safe with the UK government since they ususally lose the data before they can evaluate it.
"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.
If you think that The Times should be called Times of London to clarify matters to people who have a newspaper who has borrowed the name, you probably also rename your fonts to Times of London New Roman.
That The Times has been The Times since 1788, generations before your local copycat newspaper, is of no importance to you?
Heck, while we're at it, why not demand that the British call Jersey "Jersey, the Channel Island" too, because New Yorkers sometimes refer to New Jersey as just Jersey?
New York Times is not "The Times". If someone says just "The Times", there's no ambiguity at all.
Oh, and what's up with posting as AC? Grow a backbone, man. There are, reportedly, people with them even in your neck of the wood.
Show me one actual democracy in Europe (I know, England doesn't want to be a part of it) and I'll gladly take your cream and slap it on a spotted dick. We all have these fancy democracy-schmemocracy thingamajigs on paper but most of the countries here aren't actually concerned about what's good for their populace. Norway and Sweden may be exceptions but they too have that ridiculous antiquated monarchy crap going on. Every country that raises taxes to pay for some useless shmuck's castle and carriage has my pity.
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....
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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
My keyboard speaks SSL and my computer only trusts its cert. Any keylogger is useless against my keyboard because the data is encrypted in the middle and I would be warned if anyone was intercepting the data.
Well, It doesn't really but it's not such a bad idea given the current arms race between gumbiments with their power lust and the otherwise innocent people who they want to spy on.
I drink to make other people interesting!
"Why the hell do the British trust their gov't so much?"
Many don't. But what do you suggest they do about it? The current government was elected by 22% of voters, so even with the vast majority not voting for them they got enough seats in Parliament to push through any authoritarian measures they choose.
The smart people are getting the hell out of the UK before the doors are closed.
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).
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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.
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!
Only Sweden of all the other EU countries has attempted this and the various privicy groups have protested effectivly and loudly so it will probably be blown out of the water.
This is a classic UK civil service tactic -- introduce unpopular legislation that suits thier purposes and say the EU made them do it.
To any suckers who are still living in the Old Country -- if you dont like it stop moaning and vote the b****s out.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Is it? Or are the newspapers just writing more about it?
Remember a few years ago when gun crime was the "big thing"? Despite the stats showing that only a vanishingly small fraction of violent crimes in the UK involved a gun at the time... It was an impression created almost exclusively by the media with the help of family and friends of victims that were trotted out as "evidence" of how Britain was facing a plague of gun crime.
I am not saying knife crime isn't a problem - it is certainly a bigger problem than gun crime has been in this country since before the hand gun ban -, but I haven't seen any stats, just reports from the same media that never retracted or apologized for their unsupported "We are all going to be shot to death, OMG!!!!" scare stories.
I'm Portuguese, I lived in Holland for 8 years and I've been living in England for the past 2 years.
In addition to English and Portuguese I also speak Dutch, French and Spanish and can understand some Italian and German.
The points I made above come from my observations from the countries I lived in and from watching TV from several other countries (since I can understand their language).
As somebody pointed up, the same kind of cultural crisis is happening in other countries, not just the UK. The difference is that in the UK (or at least England where I live) and from what I can see, the process is a lot more advanced and there are a lot more social ills than either in Portugal or Holland.
From my living experience there, and in my opinion:
- The reason why things are not as bad in Portugal is because family bonds there are very strong still, people are in general much less prone to violence and parent still teach "respect for others" to their kids. Also the country is still very culturally uniform and has a large number of traditions which are still celebrated in the media.
- The reason why things are not as bad in Holland is because people as individuals are also concerned with being a good part of society and thus balance their individual needs with being accepted by society (while in England the individual is supreme and absolute selfishness is acceptable). In Holland if you behave like an asshole you will be told that you are an asshole (Dutch people can be very direct and "in your face", some people confuse this with lack of politeness), while in England if you do that, your palls will cheer you, everybody else will shut up and you might even get your own TV Show.
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.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7812353.stm