Slashdot Mirror
Are UK Police Hacking File-Sharers' Computers?
superglaze writes "Following its takedown earlier this week of the music blog RnBXclusive, the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has claimed that "a number of site users have deleted their download histories" in response. Given that the site didn't host copyright-infringing files itself, how do they know? We've asked, but SOCA refuses to discuss its methods. A security expert has pointed out that, if they were hacking using Trojans, the police would themselves have been breaking the law. Added fun fact: SOCA readily admits that the scare message it showed visitors to the taken-down site was written 'with input from industry.'"
Cool when you're watching nefarious plotting on Taggert or Law and Order: UK but not so funny when it's you. And the accusation is that you're depriving a Hollywood mogul .00000001 per cent of a payment on this third Mercedes.
"a number of site users have deleted their download histories" What does that even mean? Cleared their IE Browsing History? Deleted their Chome cache? Removed things from FireFox's "Recent Downloads" folder?
SOCA, How about a message from the people that pay you, "You are not above the law".
Never let the facts get in the way of good propaganda.
Shit just got serious!
UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency
The Internet is Serious Business
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
These has been widespread suspicion that SOCA commits serious crimes. Whether it prevents them or captures the villains is also doubtful.
Perhaps they were using browser exploits to determine if people had cleared their history or cache. Most (all?) of the major browsers used to allow Javascript to detect if links had been visited, so it could check known pages on the site to see if they had been accessed. Similarly the server can tell if files are in the browser's cache because it doesn't re-download them.
Combine that information with IP address logs and you know... well, nothing actually, but if the message they posted on the site is anything to go by they either don't understand that or are just lying deliberately. My guess is that this claim is the latter.
If you look at the site now the threats have been removed, like someone told them to stop breaking the law themselves. The result of IPCC complaints probably.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I did actually RTFA and my conclusion from the comments attributed to the police is that they are either full of shit or they just read some forum posts. Hacking never would have entered my mind.
If SOCA, Serious Organised Crime Agency dealing with serious organized crime is fighting copyright infringement, then what is the agency called that deals with such things as mobsters, thieves, assassinations and illegal prostitution gangs? Those organized crimes aren't serious enough for SOCA? They sure are causing a lot more harm to the tax-payers.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Jesus.
These cretins ought to be dealing with people traffickers, gang crime and other actual Serious Organised Crime.
That they are taking down music sharing sites is ridiculous. The justification I heard recently was even more laughable. It was serious organised crime because it cost the record labels 15 million.
Ah, record label mathematics, even better than cop math!
I don't doubt that these sites are hives of illegal activity. What they are not is a serious threat to the British public, which SOCA should be concentrating on, not pissing into the wind trying to clamp down on piracy.
So write them a letter if you are not in the UK
http://www.soca.gov.uk/contact-soca/complaints
I personally linked the definition of terrorism ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrorism ) in my e-mail and called them out on their terrorist actions
Sure, it's non-violent terrorism.. but it STILL IS terrorism....
In what parallel universe were the RnB exclusive blog activities Serious Organized Crime? Okay, modern RnB could be considered a crime, but still...
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
What judge granted the 15 million claim? You can't take down people's businesses just because someone claims they are costing them money in illegal damages. If that's the truly a fact, they could sue in court for the losses. Once the losses were validated by a Judge, they could first ask the losses to be paid. If those weren't paid, they could have the assets of the business confiscated. Maybe *then* you would have a case for taking down the website, but not before.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
What they did there was make a false allegation against him and anyone who downloaded music. He can't now get a fair trial because he's been accused of theft by the police publicly but they haven't brought a theft charge against him confirming it is a false claim.
They prejudiced his trial.
So what they need to do at this point is get back within the limits of the law, and stop propagandizing. The police have no place in society as a political campaign group.
Also they need to recognize that RIAA now represents less than 30% of music sold, and that 2011 was the biggest year for music sales on record. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, it's dealt with by copyright laws, not theft laws. The only input they should be seeking on a take down notice is LEGAL input on the LAWS as they stand in the UK. Nothing else.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/cue-the-music-driven-by-digital-music-sales-up-in-2011/
What will happen now, is those false claims they made will be used in court as evidence of police misrepresentation of evidence.
Its their "network" and your ip and usage is logged for a short time in some detail. Ip and billing data might be kept for many, many months, but if your quick :)
They know the site, the names of the files and have a time frame. The rest is UK wide database work.
This was done with very unique data from newsgroup posts. Take the data to the isp's and do a massive search seeking people who downloaded the file/s.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
... it's legal, and you end up in jail
When you hack cops' computers, it's illegal, and you end up in jail
Head you lose, tail, you also lose
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Take this with as much salt as you think it needs.... but the easiest way I can think of to do this is actually quite possible with no hacking.
Step 1: Take over the site through legal means. .torrent file in the last month. There's a good chance the configuration for how much to keep in the way of logs won't have been nailed down to "almost nothing" because until recently, most of the sites that hosted nothing but .torrent files thought they were on fairly solid legal ground so didn't need to worry about that sort of thing. .torrent files over an insecure link (dead easy to find out because many ISPs operate transparent proxy servers for HTTP traffic) and subsequently used a lot of bandwidth, that may well be enough to get a court order to seize the customer's own computer equipment.
Step 2: Troll through the server logs, getting the IP addresses of everyone that's downloaded a
Step 3: Filter the list you got in step 2 for all IP addresses assigned to UK ISPs.
Step 4: Contact those ISPs with a court order requesting:
- Identity of who had IP address XX.XX.XX.XX at the appropriate date/time.
- What else those people had been downloading. You don't need DPI-type information; if a customer has also been downloading lots of other
You want a higher burden of evidence before getting a court order? Fine, limit it to IP addresses that have been visiting the site regularly and downloaded a lot. Yes, dynamic IP addresses do change but they don't typically change on an hourly basis. A single IP address that downloads a lot over the course of a couple of hours could easily be enough.
There. You've now got enough information to monitor the UK without having to plant a single trojan or do a single thing illegally.
It's bootleggers we need to worry about. Piracy is pretty much try-before-you-buy.
I dunno,
Firefox has this creepy new dashboard on New Tabs that shows parts of your history, and it's semi-permanent-sorta even if you delete parts of your history in the settings. I didn't do any exhaustive research, just that I noticed a top level partial history delete didn't work. All I'm saying is that stuff like the new Google data-merge is gonna intersect eventually with the cops/govt spreading their fear campaigns.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Harrassment is illegal. Get him to formally complain to the police, his MP and the local council, demand action and if necessary ask a court for an ASBO.
Use the system against itself.
Here's what I sent them. If I had been wider awake, I would have skipped the last paragraph. I enjoyed writing it, but sarcasm is almost always counterproductive.
Dear SOCA,
When I saw the takedown notice at RnBXclusive, I was sure that it was a spoof. The bald statements about the guilt of "the individuals behind this website," apparently unproved in court, the threats of prosecution to myself, and the speculative claims about the "future of the music industry," seemed too absurd to be written by a serious law enforcement agency. Then, the advertisement for pro-music.org at the end made it clear that this was either a spoof by pro-music, or more likely by an opponent trying to embarrass pro-music.
I was astonished to find acknowledgment on your own web site that this absurd text was indeed your own.
I never heard of RnBXclusive before, and have no opinion whatsoever regarding the legality of the behavior of "the individuals behind" that website, nor your takedown of the site and reported arrest of the "individuals." But I hope that you will be more careful in the future to post only relevant and sensible notices that stay well within the scope of your legal mission.
I recommend to you the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) as a source of careful analysis of online behavior by individuals, corporations, governments, and law enforcement agencies. They do not appear to have posted any specific comments about RnBXclusive, SOCA, or your recent arrest and DNS takeover, but they can provide some of the best advice available when consulted.
If you must advertise legal sources of music downloads, let me recommend my favorite, magnatune.com, which is not represented by those "behind" the pro-music.org website, and which will perhaps suffer competitively from your public endorsement of pro-music.org.
Sincerely Yours,
Michael J. O'Donnell
The University of Chicago
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/