British police set to step up hacking of home PCs
No free speech even in your own home?
"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. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives "a coach and horses" through privacy laws.
The hacking is known as "remote searching". It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone's PC at his home, office or hotel room. Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.
Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone's UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.....
Police say that such methods are necessary to investigate suspects who use cyberspace to carry out crimes. These include paedophiles, internet fraudsters, identity thieves and terrorists. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said such intrusive surveillance was closely regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. A spokesman said police were already carrying out a small number of these operations which were among 194 clandestine searches last year of people's homes, offices and hotel bedrooms.
Source
6 comments:
Wow. That is so over the top! Don't they have anything like our 4th Amendment?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
From the article:
Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, agreed that the development may benefit law enforcement. But he added: “The exercise of such intrusive powers raises serious privacy issues."
Gee, ya think?!?
I hope they get pushback from their citizens on this hard! Any U. S. legislator that tried something like this would find me camped outside their door. And I seriously doubt that I would be alone.
the UK doesn't have a constitution.
Most EU countries that do have constitutions that define subjects' duties to the state rather than the limits of the power of the state, quite the reverse to the US constitution.
There is no way this will get reversed unless maybe someone manages to get it before the European Court and get it declared in violation of the European convention on human rights, but that's next to impossible.
There's another way it could be reversed - the people decide this is the last straw and revolt. And the lives of the politicians who tried to impose it on the people could rightly be considered forfeit.
Could not do that in the US huh? Look up clipper chip. As hard as they were pushing for that do you think they gave up on the idea or just decided to do something else and not say anything?
Even though the US is no longer the free country people think it is, this would never stand up to a constitutional challange on any number of levels. But apparently, the British people don't seem to care about this, so why should we.
"don't seem to care" : the item says there are objections within Britain (Members of Parliament, civil liberties groups, etc.). Even written constitutions can be modified or interpreted by later laws and court rulings and it takes a lot to legally challenge that.
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