The plan from the Home Office (driven by the EU) is to allow Police to remotely access peoples computers with out having to apply to the courts for the privilege.
Now I’m all for a easier and quicker way for the Home Office and the Police to track down things like Paedophilla and Terrorism while bypassing the court for the purpose of evidence collection. The word is that they will have to get authorization from a Chief Constable before being allow to do this but the problem with this is the police having access to technology/software to access people’s computers remotely. How do we know they aren’t going to be looking for naked pictures of peoples wife’s?
I’m not saying that the Police are going to be running around “looking though peoples windows from the helicopter” but giving them the tools to “hack” and lowering the rules on when and how they can do this; may open up a risk in peoples privacy that is not necessary. Information released by the home office say that in 2007/8 the Police hacked into 194 computers in the UK, all of them with a court order. What they haven’t released however is how many of these “Hacks” resulted in an arrest. So why would they need to bypass the courts when in two years they have only needed to hack into peoples computer around 8 times per month. Even if the number of times they need to do this triple in the next two years it will still be a small blip on the bigger picture.
Read the full storey at: http://tinyurl.com/9ytubw
Do you think the Police should be able to access people computers remotely and when is it right to do this?
This stinks. But I think their proposed methods are flawed.
Steps to follow to prevent your private data being spied on and stolen:
1. Ensure your wireless network is secured and encrypted
2. Use encryption software on your important/illegal documents
3. Don’t run suspicious applications. It will probably help to use Linux and/or Mac OS X here instead of Windows as they are the more secure OSs
4. Store important/illegal data on removable disks – only plug them when you need access to them
It is rubbish that they should be even looking to do this.
I agree with your hints and tips some good advise to you want to keep you privacy, private.
For me the things stored on my hard drive should be no different to the things in the draws in my house.
If the Police turn up and want the search my things then cool; they will turn up at my front door with a bit of paper in there hands telling me they are allowed to do it; but being able to access information without me knowing about it and with out needing that bit of paper. Its just wrong.
If somebody is going to Hack into my system to steal information from me, it no different to braking into my house and doing it. The Police however shouldn’t be in a position to do this.
It can’t possibly go through if anyone in this country still retains any bloody common sense…I’ve never heard anything so absurd. What the hell will they think of next??
On that note, not that I could be dissuaded, but I’m definitely sticking with my Mac.
Yeah, will this affect Macs?
To be fair, this is going to be a bit silly. I doubt burglars and car thieves keep accounts of their operations on their computers. Pedophiles and computer hackers, who manage to run elaborate networks hidden away on remote servers, aren’t possibly going to fall for opening a email attachment called “funnypic.jpeg.exe” are they?
I’ve had my house searched for ‘evidence’ before. Surely coming into your home, with a warrant, and taking the machine away makes more sense than attempting to get in remotely. They won’t be getting in my machine using these methods, that’s for sure.
Anyone else remember the rumours of the NSA key in Windows?