Author: Phil GB

Come on Cops check out my hard Drive!

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?

Frozen New Year

The new year is here and lets be honest 2009 is going to be all about the money….. well lack of it.

Frozen New Year

As we land into 2009, House prices are falling, the UK VAT rate is all over the place, Banks are going under and retailers on the high street are going under like its going out of fashion.  While everyone is starting to thinking about how to achieve their New Year Resolutions I was wondering how many peoples New Year Resolutions are all about getting themselves sorted finically; instead of just ditching pork pies from their bellies.

Lets be honest if something’s going to go tits up in your finances its a high chance that its going to happen this years.  You could ether sort it out and get out of debt or you could just screw it; pretend that everything is going to be ok and prepare for the worst.

Personally I’m going to work my nuts off, make the most of my time and do it with a big fat smile on the face the whole time.

This year I am restarting my mission post one picture per week for the whole of the year.  Any one interested join in at http://www.flickr.com/groups/pic52/

52 Weeks – PIC 52

Happy New Year to you all – X