THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. ……
Yet another reason Labour need to be removed from government. roll
I don't think its a good idea anyway. From what I've read of operation ore the police don't have a good understanding of computer crime. Also whats to stop them planting evidence..
From what I've read of operation ore the police don't have a good understanding of computer crime. Also whats to stop them planting evidence..
I would be interested to see your justification for a comment such as this. It seems to infer that all police officers are technically illiterate and basically corrupt!
Buster
Yet another reason Labour need to be removed from government. roll
I don't think its a good idea anyway. From what I've read of operation ore the police don't have a good understanding of computer crime. Also whats to stop them planting evidence..
Agree that this a (another) erosion on the privacy and freedom of your average good citizen. Very sad state of affairs; plus it's likely to encourage the use of anonymising proxies, encryption and similar.
It's not peculiar to Labour as you say or even the UK; it's an EU edict! Plus in my experience some of the finest minds in UK computer forensics are serving police officers; they may be under-resourced but to say they have a poor understanding of computer based crime couldn't be further from the truth.
From what I've read of operation ore the police don't have a good understanding of computer crime. Also whats to stop them planting evidence..
I would be interested to see your justification for a comment such as this. It seems to infer that all police officers are technically illiterate and basically corrupt!
Buster
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From what I understand a lot of innocent people got caught up in this who were victims of credit card fraud. This lead to messing a lot of people up when the police kicked their doors in accusing them of viewing child porn. It just doesn't have the same impact as a speeding ticket..
I suppose I was making a rather large generalisation when I said police tho.
I think the thing you guys are missing is that the police in this case are no different than any other hacker. Do what you should be doing anyways and it won't be a problem. No system is unhackable, but put up enough barriers and you won't be worth their time. Are the police going to try and hack your system for minutes, hours, days only to most likely find nothing of evidentiary value? Or are they going to hit those systems that they can get into with little or no effort?
That said, being that is an EU edict, and I'm in america, bfd, that law or order wouldn't stand in the States, even under the most corrupt regimes. As soon as it hit the supreme court, they would bat that thing down. If not immediately, than in due time.
I think it is important to put some perspective on the article.
This is not just a carte blanche authority for police officers across the UK to start hacking into suspects computers as and when they feel like it. The powers to conduct such operations are strictly controlled by other UK legislation such as RIPA. Very senior officers will be required to give the approval having been supplied with all of the available information, and in certain circumstances that authority will have to be made at home office level. These decisions will be made based on the seriousness of the offence under investigation, will more than likely only be used in cases that threaten serious harm or loss of life and will have regard for the potential for collateral intrusion into the privacy of persons not connected with the suspect. I cannot see that it will be deployed on more than handful of occasions each year and if its use prevents another 9/11 or 7/7 then it is fine with me. That having been said, there can be bad elements in all walks of life, including the police and security services, therefore these powers do need careful and considered deployment whilst maintaining a transparent, accessible audit trail.
As for the comments concerning Operation Ore, I would suggest that as a student presumably seeking a career in digital forensics that you consider the importance of seeking information from both side of the debate before committing something to text. Apparently you based your observations on one newspaper article which does not really give a balanced view of the argument and certainly does not prepare you for a proper debate on the subject if that is what you were seeking. As someone who conducted nearly fifty Op Ore investigations I would obviously propose a different view. Suffice to say that I sleep well at night in the knowledge that of the cases proceeded with under Op Ore, and many cases were not pursued for a variety of reasons, the people who ended up in prison deserved to be there because sufficient evidence was found to satisfy a conviction in a court of law. And not one of those successfully prosecuted cases relied upon the historical access to the Landslide servers, they were all based on recent activity involving paedophile material.
Oh, and by the way. I had cause to visit the doors of sixty or more addresses during the course of Operation Ore and not one was 'kicked in'. I found that knocking on the door followed by a cheery 'good morning sir' was much more effective. D
I think it is important to put some perspective on the article.
This is not just a carte blanche authority for police officers across the UK to start hacking into suspects computers as and when they feel like it. The powers to conduct such operations are strictly controlled by other UK legislation such as RIPA. Very senior officers will be required to give the approval having been supplied with all of the available information, and in certain circumstances that authority will have to be made at home office level. These decisions will be made based on the seriousness of the offence under investigation, will more than likely only be used in cases that threaten serious harm or loss of life and will have regard for the potential for collateral intrusion into the privacy of persons not connected with the suspect. I cannot see that it will be deployed on more than handful of occasions each year and if its use prevents another 9/11 or 7/7 then it is fine with me. That having been said, there can be bad elements in all walks of life, including the police and security services, therefore these powers do need careful and considered deployment whilst maintaining a transparent, accessible audit trail.
According to the article "A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years." A lot more potential offendees than just those that 'threaten serious harm or loss of life'.
I believe the main issue is that the authority to do this very intrusive work lies with the police who may have their own agenda and who are non-elected representatives. Additionally, the police are not bound by the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information Act in the same way as other state organisations, so your 'loyal subject' has no way of checking whether these powers are being abused or not.
Jonathan
According to the article…
Again, one of the main points I was trying to make was that press articles are not necessarily the best source of information to base an opinion on. I would prefer to read the actual legislation (which I admit I haven't had the chance to do up to now) rather than form an opinion from the views of a single journalist. The remarks I made were based on over twenty years of criminal investigation experience within one police force. Other peoples experiences may differ of course.
I fully accept peoples concerns regarding the right to privacy, but I also know from experience how difficult investigations into subjects such as counter terrorism can be and feel that there has to be a balance.
Sometimes law enforcement and security agencies are damned if they do and damned if they don't and finding that balance is almost impossible. That is where properly thought out and implemented legislation can be very effective, however it does rely on the integrity and professionalism of those charged with deploying the appropriate response to a given set of circumstances.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
Buster
The definition of 'serious crime' was taken from the article, but the proposals/intention of the police to carry out these searches without judicial permission or checks is fact. My opinion on the facts is that this is a bad thing and that it will be counter-productive.