Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
My ADSL was working again by the time I got home. A router problem at the ISP apparently.
Work wasn’t too bad today, busy, but ok.
Weather was foggy and damp.
Bo email’s the Daynotes backchannel to let us know about the latest British Police effort. Apparently they’ve setup a cluster of servers to hack and crack into servers, websites, and the rest. The prime effort, obviously is to pick up pedophiles and terrorists.
While I’m sure their motive are correct, I think their method of achieving the aim is a little suspect.
I’m happy for them to be hacking their way into machines which they’re pretty sure are being used for dodgy things (sure enough that a court order would be issued). But randomly targetting PCs connected to the internet is going a little far.
Firstly hacking into people’s machines is illegal. I’m not sure that the police should be doing illegal things, just so they can catch people (I’m pretty sure the Data Protection act prohibits the Police from altering computer data, which hacking into a machine is likely to do).
Finally, I’m not sure why they can’t use more traditional techniques to catch people using these suspect servers. Contact the host, the ISP, work with them to catch all they need.
With things like this going on, it won’t be long until the Police catch you the moment you do something wrong (see Demolition Man, 1993).
As ususal, this sucks.
Posted by Phil on October 31, 2002 08:43 PM | Categories: Work