British police allowed to hack into private PCs

[Mr Gav 10]

Just seen this:

 

The power of anti piracy organizations is constantly growing and latest news from Great Britain sounds somehow scary: 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. A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years. The authorities could break into a suspect’s home or office and insert a “key-logging” device into an individual’s computer. This would collect and, if necessary, transmit details of all the suspect’s keystrokes. The Home Office said it was working with other EU states to develop details of the proposals.

 

Source: The Times / RLSLOG

[KJ_VENOM 10]

I wish this suprised me but it doesn't, more civil liberties eroded this time not by Gordon Stalin but by the faceless MEPs.

 

There will be those on here that say "if you haven't got anything to hide it wont matter"

This maybe true, for now, but how long before every new pc will have this technology? Inbuilt, logging every keystroke, all information going back to some government server, the passwords to which will be left on some kind of public transport.

 

Orwell was right just a few years out!

[Alastair 12]

I don't know which is worse, our government or the non-accountable EU government which hands down these directives. It's truly scary and I would advise everyone to take measures to keep these hackers out.

 

Probably if you successfully prevent government hacking you will get a 4am police raid on the grounds "if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to worry about".

 

What is the best way to protect against hackers?

[DaFoot 10]

Use decent firewalls.

 

Some more on this story:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/05/police_remote_snoop/

[Alastair 12]

I don't think firewalls are even an issue here. Why should we have to firewall against our own government??

 

Surely they should be on our side and not something we have to worry about? The whole relationship between citizens and government has gone wrong in this contry

[Cyclone 10]

Just seen this:

 

The power of anti piracy organizations is constantly growing and latest news from Great Britain sounds somehow scary: 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. A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years. The authorities could break into a suspect’s home or office and insert a “key-logging” device into an individual’s computer. This would collect and, if necessary, transmit details of all the suspect’s keystrokes. The Home Office said it was working with other EU states to develop details of the proposals.

 

Source: The Times / RLSLOG

 

It is worrying, but you've managed to link Serious crime at the end, with anti-piracy at the start. How?

[L00b 441]

Unless either (i) you'd be dumb enough to open an email with attachment from someone/some company you don't know (reportedly this is how 'they' would install the keylogger),

or (ii) the men-in-black physically break into your home/office to install some snooping kit,

their attempts at remote snooping are likely to be about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

 

A healthy combination of hardware + software firewalls and IP blocking software (e.g. PG2) should see you sorted.

 

Personally, I use 2 physical routers (one maintains ADSL web connection, WiFi disabled, and feeds another, WiFi enabled, to which local devices connect, both have in-build hardware firewalls plus my own settings/policies to manage ins/outs, IP ranges, allowed/disabled/forwarded ports, connectable MACs + LAN IPs, exceptions, etc.), plus XP Firewall and another software firewall and PG2 (not forgetting AVG and spyware/adware monitors)

 

If you use Outlook/Outlook Express, of course you should disable the preview pane (because it automatically opens emails) and specify that emails are not to be opened unless double-clicked (this is a very old security tip, I can't even remember how to do it by now!)

 

EDIT @ Cyclone: not the OP's fault, put it down to 'modern journalism' (that which repeats much, without ever querying much )

[Alastair 12]

Again, why should we have to protect against our own government??

[esme 10]

and we thought that anyone hacking into our PC's were going to be criminals

 

more info - http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39372009,00.htm

 

as for breaking in and installing a keylogger, thats not necessary it's possible to do this over a wifi connection by breaking the WEP & WPA key, so then you are down to the firewalls on the machine

 

there are rumours that firewalls, antivirus and antispyware software have holes in them specifically for officially sanctioned things like keyloggers, personally I don't believe that as the bad guys would have found them long ago

 

this isn't going to catch a single criminal, it's going to catch the ordinary bloke who makes a mistake, organised crime knows damn well the price it will pay for being caught and will take appropriate safeguards such as the multiple hardware/software firewalls, IP blocking and mac filtering I saw L00b mention earlier whereas the average bloke won't bother or more probably even know about that

 

this is going to lead to "fishing expeditions", vehicles with wifi and a computer suite will sit outside houses and trawl through whatever systems they can find just to see if they can find evidence of criminal activity

 

now ok it will probably be a largely automated search looking for keywords, which is another thing the criminals won't be using, but say you've been indulging in correspondence with your lover do you really want the content of those emails to be circulated in the police canteen ?

 

it's a bad move brought on because the home office is terrified of us and wants to micromanage us at every step but to do that they have to know what we are doing all the time, this is just another nail in that coffin

[L00b 441]

as for breaking in and installing a keylogger, thats not necessary it's possible to do this over a wifi connection by breaking the WEP & WPA key, so then you are down to the firewalls on the machine

 

True, but that really is not a trivial exercise (at least for the WPA bit). My £0,02 says the authorities would have to already have some serious grounds/intel to resort to that, considering the resources likely to be required. And the kind of people likely to attract that level of attention from authorities very probably don't use WiFi (too easy to compromise, MAC spoofing is old news to the determined h4xx0r) but cabled connections.

 

organised crime knows damn well the price it will pay for being caught and will take appropriate safeguards such as the multiple hardware/software firewalls, IP blocking and mac filtering I saw L00b mention earlier whereas the average bloke won't bother or more probably even know about that

 

I'm quick to add, I'm not a criminal (just have to keep my PC super-secure re. client confidentiality)

[Grandad.Malky 11]

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.

 

The authorities could break into a suspect’s home or office and insert a “key-logging” device into an individual’s computer. This would collect and, if necessary, transmit details of all the suspect’s keystrokes. The Home Office said it was working with other EU states to develop details of the proposals.

 

Source: The Times / RLSLOG

 

How do you covertly break into someone’s house?

[splodgeyAl 10]

Again, why should we have to protect against our own government??

 

That's always been the case