We need to make it even easier for UK terror cops to rummage about in folks' phones, says govt lawyer The Government Reviewer of Terrorism Laws has declared that safeguards protecting Britons from police workers demanding passwords for their devices must be watered down. In a speech delivered to conservative think tank the Henry Jackson Society yesterday, Jonathan Hall QC, the "Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation"* …
Idea for the darker thinking devs of this world.
Create an application that allows a password to unblock the phone but completely wipes the contents beforehand...
Along the same lines as the secondary code used on many alarm systems, it unlocks the alarm but silently informs the surveillance agency of an infraction/threat..
Does not work for most situations where the data they're looking for isn't just received messages, such as encryption private keys used by some apps, contacts, notes or recordings, photos or videos, metadata that can't easily be wiped, metadata that can be easily deleted but you didn't in time, access tokens or passwords letting them into other things, and the like.
> unblock the phone but completely wipes the contents beforehand
...and get condemned for obstruction of justice.
Don't fool yourself, if you're innocent you just can't win. The only way to "not lose" is to be a real criminal (spy, terrorist). and in this way make sure those sledgehammers won't be used for swatting a mere mosquito (since apparently they have to be used).
In short: The government thinks you're a criminal and you'll get what's coming to you anyway, so don't disappoint it.
Because the law that already exists makes not talking to the police and giving them what they want punishable with an extra prison sentence. Yes, it's obviously a massive abuse of the suspect's rights, but when the average citizen finds out that being silent can land them in prison for longer or in prison at all if they can't be convicted on another crime, they'll probably choose to speak up. That's why the law itself needs to be eliminated.
Unfortunately this may be of limited use. Rule one when trying to analyse a suspects drive is to image it and work on the image. If the drive then wipes itself al thats happened is the curent image is wiped. As you keep an unaltered original image sitting around you can just spin up another copy for a second attempt.
Do we need a phone that acts as a very thin client? All activity is handled by a box that lives somewhere else - including phone calls, web access, email etc, so nothing on the phone to be seized. Don't even need a password on it. Just make sure that you have TWO of the 'remote boxes' - one for real use, and the other that you only use to access gov.uk and phone your mum. When asked, you give the password for the innocuous one. Works as well for Homeland Security in the Land of the Free (TM), no social media trail!
Nice idea. Should be trivial to secure a conviction for Withholding Evidence when you fail to declare the second box when ordered to do so by the court. Which would be a nice little boost to the rate of people being charged (running at 7% as reported today).
If they could stop wannabe Tory politicians from derailing rape trials that would be nice too, but getting cheap convictions of the little people like you and I is probably easier. Always go for the low-hanging fruit.
Of course, there's an even simpler and less questionable solution.
Move out of Blighty to nearly anywhere else in the world that isn't China or North Korea.
Even the USA has stronger protections than this, FFS. And the EU is quite nice.
If British politicians have decided they don't want an effective high tech sector, why keep fighting them?
>Do we need a phone that acts as a very thin client?
Well with the voice assistants we seem to be moving in that direction.
In which case the decision becomes do I use Siri/Alexa/Cortana/Google or convert to Alice/Xiaoyi/Mi.
Not sure if any of these services use Nuance's voice biometric authentication, but that does away with passwords and could lead to some interesting access problems; expect to be asked (nicely) would you mind doing the talking...
Mind you if you have a second language, you could probably run both Siri and Alice - to satisfy your two "remote boxes" criteria.
Given that just about anything gets deemed a terror group if the govt / security folks don't like it, then scope creep will be massive.
FFS I remember decades ago getting targeted photographed by the cops (before contentious video days) when protesting about racism / apartheid in SA (back when Mandela was still in prison & regarded as a terrorist by many UK MPs) at an event where SA ambassador was present. Being anti-apartheid back then meant you were regarded as very suspect indeed (waves hello to old Special Branch folk who used to hassle me).
If these changes go through you'll see Extinction Rebellion (or whatever harmless (but inconvenient for some) protest group is causing a bit of traffic chaos in London) magically fall into terrorist investigation category.
>Properly, I believe that would be the Americanization of British Economic Democracy
Depends on context.
If the writer was an American writing about the UK then it would be appropriate for them to talk about the "Americanization of British Economic Democracy".
If on the other hand the writer is British and appealing to the UK audience then some would deem it more appropriate to talk about the "Americanisation of British Economic Democracy." If only to emphasis "we do things differently this side of the pond".
Which would be perfectly fine if we could rely on the Police (and others of HM's security services) to apply the legislation at their disposal with integrity, just cause and a transparent determination to apply the law fairly and justly, i.e. not allow the law to be weaponised in order to intimidate those deemed 'awkward/inconvenient' by powerful people in order to pursue their own political/economic advantage.
>>>unclear whether the barrister was calling for the word "terrorism" to be inserted alongside "child indecency" and "national security"<<<
If terrorism isn't covered under the 'National Security' catch-all then WTF is?
>>>working against the clock ... Pre-charge detention – arrest and incarceration without being charged – for people apprehended under terrorism powers lasts for up to a fortnight. <<<
That will be the 14 days (previously 2(ICBW) that Tony Blair backed down to after the original proposal (90 days detention without seeing a judge) stirred up a massive national shout about Habeas Corpus being a cornerstone of our freedom from government tyranny (going back to magna-carta).
14 Days is quite long enough to for someone to 'disappear' of our streets without a judge being involved. Plod & a myriad other agencies are quite capable of simply watching a suspect until they have enough evidence for a judge to look at.
"If terrorism isn't covered under the 'National Security' catch-all then WTF is?"
Presumably the problem is that anti-terror laws are now used so widely in many cases where there's no demonstrable national security threat. The legislation was originally aimed at defeating active terror plots against the clock so the bigger sentencing requirements reflect that imminent threat.
Nowadays if a schoolkid from an Islamic background viewed an ISIS vid on TikTok and the evidence is on his encrypted iPhone they want to be able to put him away for 5(*) years instead of 2 but it's very far from being 'in the interests of national security'. Indeed it may be counter to those interests by contributing to his radicalisation. It's a 'terrorist' offence by virtue of being a conviction under legislation that has the word terrorism in the title, not by being actual terrorism.
(*) 5 years is still nothing compared to the 15 he might get for the video offence so it's also proportionate, you see?
> Habeas Corpus being a cornerstone of our freedom
Sure, but they are trying to (gradually) fix that error.
They are all dreaming of the good old times when the lord and his men-at-arms could put somebody away on a whim, for as long as they deemed necessary. Such happy, simple times, no having to actually justify your decisions, or respect the feelings of the Great Unwashed. Feelings! Pah, as if they could afford any.
He is loudly claiming that the powers are deparately needed to protect us from those terrible $CURRENT BOGEYMEN$.
Where is the evidence for this need? How many times in the last few years did the lack of these powers cause a problem for the police?
No handwaving please. State the number of times, with supporting evidence.
There aren't any, most terrorists are already known to the police but they don't have the resources to monitor them properly (these powers don't change that because terrorists won't store stuff on phones or do stuff online anyway so it's useless). None if this has ever been about stopping terrorists or criminals. In my opinion it's part fear and part control. The fear is that everything you do can and will be monitored and the control comes from the fear and the ability to expand these powers to everyone and for other uses.
On second thoughts didn't they arrest some extinction rebellion protesters before a protest last year? Not sure that counts as terrorism for the average sane person though.
> In my opinion it's part fear and part control
Definitely, unfortunately I can upvote you only once.
Part laziness and wishful thinking ("If we take away encryption, all bad guys will just surrender"), part fear-mongering ("The end is nigh - Unless we get more money, and more powers, and less workload, and less supervision").
As for $CURRENT BOGEYMEN$ . . .
. . . could you remind me which one it is today? Moslems? Nazis? Paedos? Animal rights? Black? Brown? Yellow? Red? White middle-aged men? Blue-stockings?
Sorry, I have not been keeping up lately. I just need to know if the plods and spooks are coming for me.
especially when counter-terrorism police are working against the clock
Because every single terrorist is a James Bond or 24 villain - they always have a time bomb (of one sort or another) and the only possible way to stop it is to unlock their phone, right?
Since when are laws based on cliches and tropes?
1. Need to turn over "password"
Fine. But the suspect may have taken alternative steps. See item #2 below.
2. Need to turn over "encryption key"
Suspect uses a private cipher. Some ciphers (e.g. book ciphers, steganography) don't have one
3. Private ciphers are widely thought to be "very weak"
See item #4 below.
4. Asymmetry
The "bad guys" can read their private ciphers in REAL TIME. The so called "good guys" may have to wait a while to read the plain text. Is 14 days enough? See "Beale Papers" for an example of a book cipher message still not decrypted after more than a century.
*
So....my question for Jonathan Hall (and the Scottish plod, among other) is this:
Q: What will this legislation achieve?
A: Politicians will have evidence that they are "doing something". Actually the legislation achieves precisely nothing -- see above.
It's critically important that your local council can demand that you unlock your phone so that they can prove it was you who was walking your dog nearby when the highly trained nose of the nearby parking warden smelled s*** (don't ask about how they're trained, it involves senior council management, a tonsilectomy, a rabbit shaped jelly mould and a corgi called Dai).
The really bad guys won't be using too much - if any tech - because they probably never started.
Personally I can think of several ways to communicate without using any device I own. Certainly with enough capacity and latency to arrange an atrocity.
This law is typical of a socialist government. Think China, Venezuela, Ecuador, Russia, Cuba, (modern) Germany, (modern) France, etc.
Socialist (left wing) leaders are so worried about keeping power, they do anything to ensure the general public has no power.
Don't blame Trump, it's his administration which got rid of a lot of Obama's invasive left wing stormtrooper ideas.
It appears, just like Obama, Theresa May and her minions in both houses of Parliament are doing everything they can to keep their power over the citizens.
I'm no criminal, but there are many things on my computer/phone I don't want others seeing. My personal writings, who I'm communicating with, my salary, chats with a loved one, etc.
You don't have to dig too far into history books to find how socialist governments take small innocent items of a normal citizen--only to spin and create HUGE stories on how any citizen is actually a spy, terrorist, general criminal. Hmm... why are you getting (spam) email from anti-government groups? You criminal!!
This should be the reason people support Brexit. To get away from all the left-wing craziness of most of Europe. Look at all of the laws their left-wing leaders are enacting in France, Germany, Belgium, etc. to ensure they remain in power.
Left-wing propaganda sure sounds good doesn't it. They pander to everyone, promising whatever to get your support--but does it ever truly work out in the long run? The only constant is higher taxes on everyone, with below average education institutions.
While it's fun to bash Trump... you can't deny the success his policies have had. While the rest of the world is dealing with recession, the USA's economy is strong--and getting stronger. Trump's administration is handing out HB1 visas like crazy, allowing people from other countries to come in and work--especially in the tech industry, because the unemployment rate is only 3%; many companies can't find people to fill jobs--this is creating higher salaries since companies are competing for talent.
So, UK... keep enjoying all of the policies and laws Theresa May's government enacted during her many... many years in power.
Or maybe start making t-shirts promoting Brexit and Megxit. :)
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