This from blog.wired.com on January 05, 2009
"The UK's Home Office is supporting a proposal that would allow British police or MI5 agents to hack home, office and other private computers without a warrant to intercept e-mail traffic and monitor a user's other computer activities.
The proposal, initiated by the European Union council of ministers, calls for British police to install spyware on personal computers at the request of other European nations that suspect UK residents of involvement in criminal activity".
I have long since ceased to be surprised by the total disregard the Home Office shows for personal privacy and individual rights - indeed all of government for that matter - but what is really bewildering about this is that it appears to be at the behest of the EU. I have absolutely no problem with law enforcement agents using all the technology at their disposal to track child molesters, terrorists or criminal masterminds - and this authority is only supposed to be available if the people being monitored are suspected of offences punishable by three years inside or more.
What is really deeply disturbing about this is the lack of judicial supervision. It speaks volumes about the way this has been carefully preplanned to be open to abuse. The law of conspiracy kills the three year safeguard stone dead. It is a licence to spy on anything and anybody. But far worse than that, it is a clear indication that there is one thing government fears more than anything else - accountability. Why else would the Home Office proposal bypass judicial scrutiny? Because, like the criminals they claim to be watching, the one thing they really fear is justice. When society has reached the point where government is afraid of the judiciary, it has sunk about as low as it can go.
(Read the whole piece HERE)
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2 comments:
It seems to me that any enterprising person that creates software that can highlight and disable these controls will make a fortune. This is yet more evidence that the EU is heading towards a 1984 Orwellian big brother state, and since the UK does everything to excess it's terrifying for UK residents. Having seen the way anti terrorist legislation has been used to spy on people that load their waste bins incorrectly what next, spyware on your PC when you dare criticise Gordon 'spent it' Brown. Or maybe even if you dare criticise the president of Poland as that is a criminal offence there.
It is not difficult to detect and remove spy ware. In fact the software for doing so is so widely available that I am astonished they even suggested it. Far more likely, they will use these powers to track all activity by ip address which the ISPs have to give the authorities as I understand it. There is nothing we can do about that. As to directly monitoring, look out for spotty yoofs on YOPS with pricey looking laptops in parked cars and let their tyres down.
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