To the outrage of civil liberties groups and the government opposition, the UK Home Office has begun permitting police and MI5 officers to hack ("remote search") people's computers without their knowledge and without a court warrant. Information gleaned can then be shared with other European forces, in line with a shift in EU policy. The goal, as with all such moves, is to track down terrorists, paedophiles, and cybercriminals.One method for stealth surveillance involves installing spyware on targetted individuals' computers, normally by sending people emails with infected attachments. This can, of course, be done from anywhere. Another method entails hacking directly into people's wifi networks from close range. A third involves law-enforcement officials breaking into people's homes and directly installing spyware, such as keyloggers, or attaching physical monitoring devices to their machines. Any material on such hacked computers would be admissible in court.
This situation is not unlike the controversial powers granted by President Bush to the National Security Agency (NSA) to tap people's communications without their knowledge and without a warrant. In the UK, all that would be needed to justify such an operation would be that an officer "must believe that... it is necessary to prevent or detect serious crime and [the] action is proportionate to what it seeks to achieve," according to ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers).
Shami Chakrabarti, head of the UK civil-liberties group Liberty, questions the legality of the practice, saying, "These are very intrusive powers--as intrusive as someone busting down your door and coming into your home. The public will want this to be controlled by new legislation and judicial authorisation. Without those safeguards it’s a devastating blow to any notion of personal privacy."
holy ****, i would freak out if I saw a poster like that! that truely is 1984!
In the book every home had a viewscreen that they used to watch and listen to your every move. London is covered with cameras now, the Big Brother like posters are up, and now they are saying they are allowed to hack into your computer (essentially one way of getting into your home) to see what you've been up to on it. How much further is it to just go ahead and put in the viewscreens? It's kind of scary, really.
Last edited by Skyfrog on 07 Jan 2009 - 00:38
The nazi party will then declare 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'.
They will probably plant files on your HD's to frame you.
Last edited by leesmithg on 06 Jan 2009 - 06:58
Pretty soon, the "only in" saying will just go away as we all become ruled by the same overpowering government. Oddly enough, there used to be so many people that would say,"PUT ON UR TINFOIL HATZ GAIZ," when things like this were discussed...
Pretty soon, the "only in" saying will just go away as we all become ruled by the same overpowering government. Oddly enough, there used to be so many people that would say,"PUT ON UR TINFOIL HATZ GAIZ," when things like this were discussed...
Oh hai dead.cell.
Australia is much better with your censored internet and guilty until proven innocent p2p laws.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/30/austr...g-the-internet/
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09...351202&from=rss
I guess I'll just have to use internet at my work, and leave my internet at home for work purposes
hrmm guess theres not much you can do to stop that. Gone are the days where they use to bust into a place and install keyloggers, or send you emails with malware/trojans as the article alludes to in eras gone by
That's what encryption is for :-)
Also, this (the article) is the stuff that makes me consider encrypting my entire hard drive.
Yes, we all have nothing to hide, so why not just hand over the keys to our house and car to them as well?
How much more can we take?
I thought we won the war?
EDIT: Whoops
Last edited by Majesticmerc on 07 Jan 2009 - 09:32
That's George Or(son)well(es) to you, matey!
Oh, embarrassing!
They can only watch you if you are on their radar, waiting for you to do something wrong. Knowing my bloody luck, I'll do sweet fanny all and still get lifted!
Last edited by badblood on 06 Jan 2009 - 08:19
If you are not doing anything wrong, you should have nothing to hide! QED
So long as there is danger in the world, actions will be taken "for our own safety."
I was always fond of :
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
That and %^£&*@NO CARRIER
so like, if i was walking down the street, and i happen to stand in front of one of their suspects too long, then this is gonna happen to me?
Also, when someone knows a password of their friend and they're like "I'm going to hack your computer!!"
Ffs.
Be careful Winston!
And the public transport system
Even worst, this law can be used to put a false accusation to some individual, its pretty easy (if you have fairly freedom to do it) to copy a pedophile files then insert into a victim computer.
Aint it amazing what crap theyve rolled out/thought up since the "terrorism" reared up its head in the UK/US.
For example, most informed computer users would not install an attachment from a 'suspicious' email. The article mentioned hacking directly into people's wifi networks from a close range, if your router is set to use MAC address filtering or WPA2/PSK with a strong passphrase you should be OK. If an agent installed spyware on your PC chances are you'd notice it (checking the processes, running an AV/Malware scan, etc).
I'm beginning to think that all Labour governments in this world are ******. After all our Labour government in Australia is trying to censor the entire internet.
Last edited by Howway on 06 Jan 2009 - 14:26
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.