NSW Police to get hacking powers

[JustAskSally]

Hey guys i just stumbled upon this article from march, hope its not already posted up somewhere but thought it might interest a few people...

 

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/...39295354,00.htm

 

"The New South Wales Government has unveiled plans to give state police the power to hack into computers remotely, with owners potentially remaining in the dark about the searches for up to three years."

 

"they aim to give police the right to apply for covert search warrants from the Supreme Court to gather evidence in cases which could involve serious indictable offences punishable by at least seven years' imprisonment."

 

"This could including cracking codes and searching computers for evidence of child porn, drug running and money laundering."

 

"Offences covered by the new laws include the supply, manufacture or cultivation of drugs, possesson, manufacture or sale of firearms, money laundering, car or boat re-birthing and unauthorised access to modification of computer data or electronic communications."

 

Peace.

JAS

[Wrangler556]

Just recently the cops busted a whole bunch of people around Australia with kiddie porn, did it via hacking and tracking Peer2Peer networks and the like.

 

So, id say yes, they do have the capability...

[JustAskSally]

I only titled it that because that was the title of the article, i do remember seeing that in the news just never really knew what went on behind it i guess until now, im a stoner man I really shouldnt have made the title of the thread a question thats obviously been answered... meh

 

Watch out cyber junkies!!

 

 

JAS

[CannabisMan]

seriously though when will enough be enough now they can do this much what next. Dont get me wrong anyone who wants to tamper with kiddies can burn in hell but when will the invasion of privacy stop.

[JustAskSally]

The comments down the bottom were interesting.

 

"So who will they use ?Anonymous -- 10/03/09

 

And who will the police use to do this? You guessed it - their tame hacker criminals.

yes the same ones who the police will haul out of jail or serving court orders preventing them from going near computer systems.

Pah - yes we all believe the police are not corrupt. I think this needs to go before the human rights comission and Australian Federal court.

 

Criminals dressed up in lovely blue uniforms.

And stupid politicians so far removed from reality its beyond a joke.

 

 

 

"How they'll do itMystikan -- 10/03/09

 

The police have the same problem cybercrooks do: in order to get into someone's computer, they need to set up a backdoor, or Trojan, on the target machine. These are usually injected by two main means: 1) Social engineering through phishing (emails, forum posts etc) and 2) drive-by downloads injected via Javascript. We already know not to trust emails that tell us things like "Your bank account has been deactivated, please click here to reactivate it", we know not to visit certain websites, and the mosre savvy amongst us are using Firefox + NoScript (or a similar setup) to protect against Javascript drive-bys.

 

So now we simply regard Government emails and websites in the same way we regard other phishing emails and websites. Treat emails originating from government departments as spam - no government department has any reason to require you to install anything or visit any website. (I don't even install the Tax Pack software - I do my tax the old-fashioned way, on a written form). Further, treat government websites the same way you'd treat a crack-and-keygen or porn website - Javascript does not run, cookies are not set.

 

Finally, there's always the old "wait till he's gone out then sneak into his house and plant the bug" trick. Easily solved, by the same trick I use to prevent data theft in the event of theft of my computer: all hard drives in my system are either external or mounted in quick-release removable drive bays. When I go out, so do the hard drives. Then the thief can steal the computer (which is easily replaced) - or the cops can pop in their Trojans or whatever - and when you come back, you replace the hard drives and away you go. If you're really paranoid, you can rip the case off and check for unfamiliar hardware when you come back.

 

So with a good firewall, up-to-date antivirus (at least the security vendors are on our side!), some good anti-scripting browser plugins, removable hard drives and a modicum of common sense you need not worry about the police getting into your computer any more than any other hacker."

 

 

 

Anyone using this years E-TAX Software???

 

Looks like im doing another clean install after i lodge my tax return i already installed it:(.

 

Peace

JAS

[OrbitTime]

I suggest PGP in emails/PM'age and only encrypt in the recipient's key so even if they jumped your "sent" folder they'd get nothing.