CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Search & Seizure’ Category

ACLU challenges US laptop border searches: “

Civil liberties assessment still pending

Privacy campaigners are continuing a legal challenge against random laptop border searches by US customs amid concerns there may be a racial bias in those delayed and inconvenienced by stop and search powers introduced as part of the war on terror.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Police want new remote hard drive search powers: “

New laws aim to tackle backlogs

Cyber cops want new laws to allow remote searches of seized hard drives in the hope they will help reduce long digital forensics backlogs – of up to two years for some forces.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Police seize Indymedia server (again): “

Linked to animal rights extremism case?

Kent Police yesterday seized a server owned by Manchester-based hosting firm UK Grid and rented by the independent news collective Indymedia UK.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Home Office denies remote snooping plan: “

No change to police rules…yet

The Home Office has denied it has made any change to rules governing how police can remotely snoop on people’s computers.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Police set to step up hacking of home PCs – Times Online

From The Sunday Times, January 4, 2009
Police set to step up hacking of home PCs
David Leppard

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives ‘a coach and horses’ through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as ‘remote searching’. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

(more…)

Judge: No cryptographic hash analysis sans warrant: “

It’s a search

In a case that could have important implications for law enforcement investigations throughout the US, a federal judge has ruled that the cryptographic fingerprinting of suspects’ hard drives constitutes a search for purposes of the Constitution.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Germans seduce Jacqui over remote hacking of disks: “

Trojanised Home Sec comes home to infect Parliament

Is the UK Government about to turn world class hacker? It’s going to have to if the Germans succeed in getting their domestic programme of planting Trojans onto suspects computers adopted by the EU.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

EFF reveals vastly expanded search policy at US borders: “

Probable cause a thing of the past

In a move that could affect millions of people around the world, the US government has quietly relaxed a two-decade-old policy that limited the reading and copying of papers and electronic data carried by travelers crossing into American borders, according to recently released documents.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Bill seeks guidelines for US laptop searches: “

Some rules for border agents, please

US border agents can still snatch and search your laptop, mobile phone, or hard drive without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. But a bill introduced in Congress last week may enforce some guidelines on how the inspection is done.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Homeland Security: We can seize laptops for an indefinite period: “

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border.

A pair of DHS policies from last month say that Customs agents can routinely — as a matter of course …

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(Via The Iconoclast.)