British police to routinely hack into PCs without a warrant. | Hacker News Reader

British police to routinely hack into PCs without a warrant.

timesonline.co.uk

25 pointsraganwald18 comments

Man, what's going on with the UK? This is straight out of 1984. See also:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388300

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=334321

Unfortunately, people have forgotten what the thin end of a wedge looks like. Example: the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 provided that security personnel at the level of "Chief Inspector of Police" or above could provide authorisation to monitor communications for the prevention of "serious crime or terrorism."

Actual legislation, as it now stands: officials in town halls up and down the country use the same powers with little oversight, to monitor people for offences as trivial as lying on their school application form, fly-tipping and (soon) minor traffic misdemeanours such as parking on a yellow line.

Unfortunately, we're not alone: this is an EU measure, and other countries such as India, Australia and the US are, let's face it, just as culpable and opposed to genuine online freedom.

BTW, I'd like to see them use these techniques (virus-laden emails, key-loggers, wireless hacking) to get into any sufficiently tech-savvy user's computer.

Key loggers can be tough to beat. While getting a software key-logger past me would be laborious (set BIOS password-reset jumper on motherboard, enable CD boot in BIOS, boot from rescue CD, figure out my RAID settings so you can mount my root partition, install key-logger and kernel rootkit to hide the process, restore what my desktop looked like so that I don't notice), it's pretty likely that I wouldn't notice a physical one before it was too late.

I use a laptop all the time, so I was wondering if they had any other ways to physically bug a keyboard?

There are lots of laptop keyboard loggers. The real convert ones embed them in the keyboard by putting it between some connector or another. Laptop and desktop. You just need 10 minutes if your good.

There are probably key-loggers designed to be placed inside laptops, but, not being a black-hat, I've never seen or looked for one. In any case, it'd be a lot more difficult. The cop would have to be trained in how to perform the installation in a reasonable period of time.

Once Labour get kicked out things will return to sanity.

Do bear in mind how the media does like to massively overblow and exaggerate everything though.

Once Labour get kicked out things will return to sanity.

Unfortunately I doubt it. That's exactly what we all said when we kicked the Tories out.

I disagree on that. I would have much preferred the Tories to stay in, but with a strong leader. John Major wasn't that person. He was a lame ineffective duck, just as Brown is now.

At least taxes are very likely to come down under Tories, less smaller government, less needless waste etc. Maybe they'll get rid of some of the things Labour have put in place like the regional assemblies, minimum wage, endless tax credits etc

Kick the ruling party out every four years and things may get better.

Unfortunately I doubt it, the government is always in power.

We've only got two of them...

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."

I often read Charles Stross's blog (good SF writer, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html) and he comments about the big brother tactics of the British police. In addition the British don't have the same guarantees of privacy and freedom of speech that we do in the US. You can be successfully sued for libel even if what you say is true. A British citizen can be sued for a posting even if the server is in another country. Scary.

Anyone can be sued for libel in Britain for any content that is read by even one person in Britain.

Rachel Ehrenfeld was successfully sued in Britain by Khalid bin Mahfouz for writing Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It, a book that was never published in Britain. 23 copies had been shipped to Britain by online booksellers, which was enough for Britain to claim jurisdiction.

British libel law also makes web hosts, printers, bookshops etc. liable, so it is very easy to get anything out of circulation by going after the weak link in the chain: that is how Alisher Usmanov go Craig Murray's blog taken down withot actually Murray himself.

This is a good time for me to point out the RIP Human Intelligence Sources Code of Practi(c/s)e. This is a PDF which details the secret police who have the power to do a lot of stuff. You can find it on Google.

It's atrocious, and nobody knows about it, it's hidden away in a PDF.

Why the hysteria? This is a useful tool in detecting and preventing serious crimes in the modern world. I think it's a good thing.

without a warrant. Certainly I want to police to be able to search people's homes if they are likely to commit serious crimes. However, I don't want the police to be able to search my home with out some sort of evidence that I have done something improper. Similarly, I consider the data on my computer private. I think that history suggests that the government cannot be trusted to use authority responsibly unless there is some sort of system in place to guarantee that it uses its authority responsibly. That system is called warrants.

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