

British police to routinely hack into PCs without a warrant.  - raganwald
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece

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fallentimes
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>

~~~
m0nty
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.

~~~
dfranke
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.

~~~
m0nty
I use a laptop all the time, so I was wondering if they had any other ways to
physically bug a keyboard?

~~~
elai
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.

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

------
russell
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.

~~~
graemep
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.

------
zandorg
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.

------
seano
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.

~~~
lliiffee
_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.

