British PCs can now hack your personal computer without a warrant

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 06 January 2009 20:39

Your IT - Home IT

The friendly British Bobby has just been given the right to remotely hack into the computers of UK citizens without notifying the owners, or bothering with a search warrant, or even passing an act of parliament for that matter.

A few months back the Brit police proved themselves not to be too worried about the small matter of search warrants when it comes to computers, data and privacy when City of London detectives closed the investigation into BT and Phorm.

Back then the police decided that BT users had given implied consent for BT to allow Phorm to secretly monitor their Internet usage, arguing that no offence had been committed as the trials were in the interest of the users.

Now it seems that the good old British Copper will use much the same argument if caught doing a little drive by hacking of your wireless connection to look at the data on your network. According to reports the Home Office has decided the police don't need a warrant to do this stuff.

What's more, as far as the drive by hacking is concerned, they don't need to inform you that they are doing it either. Nice. Apparently the 'remote searching' as the police call it, will cover the content of all email as well as web-browser history and instant messages.

But wait, it gets worse. As part of an edict from Brussels, the new powers stretch beyond the British Bobby. In fact, police across the EU can join in the fun. It seems that police forces across Europe can ask the Brits to snoop without a warrant on their behalf and then access that data.

There is no need to worry of course, as it is all in the best interest of law abiding citizens, we are informed. Indeed, a senior police officer must 'believe' the hacking is 'proportionate' and can only be used in cases where a successful prosecution carries at least three years in prison.

Well that's OK then. Or maybe not, remember that all of this has been sneaked in without an act of parliament. More Big Brother powers in the name of security and safety it seems. Still, as David Emm, Senior Technology Consultant for Kaspersky Lab, points out there is the small matter of Internet security software to deal with.

"Internet security and anti virus protection determines a threat by its function, not by the motives of the author – so this could undermine any police attempts to covertly intrude on a computer system and is potentially a very grey area.”

Indeed, and I would recommend anyone who is not already using such protection along with some serious wireless encryption to start doing so as soon as possible. Not that this advice will be needed by the serious criminals, they will be encrypted up to the eyeballs already.