News - The Home Office plans to allow warrantless police access to private computers.

[HEXUS]

The Home Office plans to allow warrantless police access to private computers.

Read more.

[superscaper]

I don't really see the difference between doing that and say bugging your house and phone without a warrant. I'm not sure what it is about IT/computers that make the Government think that they somehow can't be personal/private. Hopefully this won't get through at all and even if it does I'm not completely sure how they could put it into practice. Would they require firewall developers to put Government accessible backdoors in?

[Funkstar]

This has now been denied by the home office.

[Jay]

good luck with getting into my house without a Warrent to get to my computer. I don't see what this will actually do? If you are a criminal who uses tech you will have ways to get around all this anyway.

[Fraz]

I don't really see the difference between doing that and say bugging your house and phone without a warrant.

There isn't a difference. Both are equally horrendous things for a "senior" officer to be allowed to do basically at random. It was a good thing that the police had to get a warrant by presenting evidence/reasoning to a civilian judge - checks and balances are important, even if they are a inconvenience to the police. A single person just isn't to be trusted with the right to bug/monitor whoever they like.

[Biscuit]

Thank god its been denied... this is a complete breech of our rights!

Technology has evolved so that we store our personal details such as banking, photos music etc etc all on PCs and legaly doing such is no different to having them in solid form.

You couldnt randomly bust into someones house just because you 'suspect' them of having a load of illegal pirate DVDs could you, why should PCs be any different?

Superscraper - the companies are not owned by the government so it would be at their discression to put such a feature into the software, unless the government passed a rule that stated it be a part of internet security... all that would happen then is we would start seeing a new breed of illegal firewalls popping up. I imagine the way in for them would be to literally hack through your firewall and whatnot.

Jay - thing is once they have scanned a PC with loads of illegal material on it they can quite easily get a warrent

[alchemist118]

That would really be very scary, all the people I know would be going to jail (I know doctor, teachers and even coppers).

This is a reason why to have a hardcore security system... Router, software firewall, antivirus and spyware. However I am pretty sure the police could have a back door to our computers...

[DWhitley]

This is not acceptable.

Presumably the usual precautions will keep them out?

If not, an article explaining how to do so would be welcome.

[Biscuit]

Peer Guardian is a nifty piece of software for blocking connections from blacklisted IPs such as government and big corporations. Bluetack.co.uk is a pretty useful site aswell.

[Funkstar]

It's all moot anyway. It was a single piece in the Sunday Times that none of the TV or Radio press have picked up on from what I can tell yet the intertubes are all over it.

It's been denied by the Home Office, so really it's not going to happen.

[Thorsson]

It's been denied by the Home Office, so really it's not going to happen.

I bet you believe it when Football Clubs back their managers too....

[Funkstar]

What's football?

[TAKTAK]

Peer Guardian is a nifty piece of software for blocking connections from blacklisted IPs such as government and big corporations. Bluetack.co.uk is a pretty useful site aswell.

do bluetack not make protowall which is an alternative to peerguardian?

[Biscuit]

yep

[miniyazz]

Presumably if they let warrantless police hack into our computers, we'd be within our rights to hack into theirs? :-p
Maybe validate Gary McKinnon too.
lol

[TeePee]

Remember people: Cold Dead Hands...