Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 23rd Oct 2012 18:24 UTC, submitted by Jane Doe
"Last week, the Dutch Minister of Safety and Justice asked the Parliament of the Netherlands to pass a law allowing police to obtain warrants to do the following: install malware on targets’ private computers, conduct remote searches on local and foreign computers to collect evidence, and delete data on remote computers in order to disable the accessibility of 'illegal files'. Requesting assistance from the country where the targetted computer(s) were located would be 'preferred' but possibly not required. These proposals are alarming, could have extremely problematic consequences, and may violate European human rights law." You get true net neutrality with one hand, but this idiocy with another. This reminds me a lot of how some of our busy intersections are designed; by people who bike to city hall all their lives and have no clue what it's like to drive a car across their pretty but extremely confusing and hence dangerous intersections.
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Member since:2008-01-01
Probably it will only be used for very serious crimes, but then we'll get some statistic that some lesser crimes cost us far more money so the public would't mind if they lower the bar. Before you know it you'll get arrested if you have over 10 MP3 files of which they can't determine if they are legal or not.
Both old and recent history has proved, time and again, that with everything, including governments, when there are means, they will be abuse.
One phrase here is wierd 'illegal files' -- can a file be illegal? If I infringe on some property or right and thus create a file, the *act* of creating the file is illlegal. If the same file is now in posession of someone who is authorized or has the rights to use the file, then it's legal. Illegal are activities, not things. Or am I wrong?
RE[2]: Comment by MOS6510
by MOS6510 on Wed 24th Oct 2012 07:47
in reply to "RE: Comment by MOS6510"
Member since:2011-05-12
I know it's not illegal to own a car, but in the Dutch city of Rotterdam the policy actively look out for expensive cars with young people in them. If they can't explain how they paid for it they're in trouble.
It's comparable with having 1.001 MP3s files on your hard disk while not owning the CDs or having an iTunes account. This doesn't make them illegal files or makes the act of getting them illegal, but it may be fishy enough for the police to hassle you.
Downloading stuff is legal in The Netherlands, yet the anti-piracy foundation keeps pretending it is.
If something isn't illegal they'll try to make it so. With MP3s they might throw in a statistic saying how much music is pirated and if we stopped it music would become cheaper and artists happier. They can't stop it of course, the only victims being foolish kids, but even if they could the prices wouldn't come down anyway.
I think the problem with cyber crime is that the dangerous people aren't easily caught. These cyber crime laws will catch more normal users, a number who didn't even know their daughter downloaded some music on her parents PC, than they will real bad guys.
If you're a serious cyber criminal you'll know how they're trying to track you and you take measures. That leaves the general public.
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2011-05-12
I think we have a secret intelligence service for these kinds of operation, certainly if it's done abroad.
Every computer is unique, even if they're all same model Dells running the same version of Windows. No doubt the police spytool will work on one and crash another. No doubt this will also happen to innocent people. I know of a case where someone I knew got arrested and his equipment taken, because he had the same on-line username as some idiot. That's the only thing they had in common, yet it took months before he got his stuff back.
This is another step towards a police state. It's not a term I like to use, because it quickly gives the impression that it sounds worse than it is, but it's another way of secretly checking up on people. You're being spied on by people you can't even see.
Probably it will only be used for very serious crimes, but then we'll get some statistic that some lesser crimes cost us far more money so the public would't mind if they lower the bar. Before you know it you'll get arrested if you have over 10 MP3 files of which they can't determine if they are legal or not.