NZ's cyber spies win new powers

Forums › ICT Policies and Regulation › NZ's cyber spies win new powers

bvidulich

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#55427 4-Jan-2010 12:55

http://www.stuff.co.nz/3203448

What's up with this? Isn't this a total invasion of privacy? Yes they still need a warrant but the warrant no longer specifies what specific method of communication they are able to intercept.

This is like a blank cheque - except its a blank warrant. Once they have this warrant they can use it to get and intercept any form of information about us that they want.

Maybe it will help the police to catch criminals in their acts, but how long will it be before they start to abuse their power to use these warrants? How before the police don't even need a warrant and can just intercept our communications anyway?

It seems more and more that our rights to privacy are being taken away from us for the "greater good" of catching criminals. And we do need our privacy online, especially for communications with banks via SMS, voice calls, email, and banking websites and yet police now are able to get access to this info through all these methods with one single warrant.

Encryption seems a viable solution to protecting one's security and already exists with methods such as SSL/TLS, PGP/GPG encryption, etc. However I don't think that methods such as PGP encryption, i.e. for emails, will ever be used by anyone outside the geek community. The average user would not know they exist or know how to use them, making these methods of encryption rather pointless.

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#286858 4-Jan-2010 13:16

if you ain't doing anything wrong you would have nothing to worry about no matter who is listening.

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#286860 4-Jan-2010 13:19

browned: if you ain't doing anything wrong you would have nothing to worry about no matter who is listening.

Wrong. You always have to worry. Who police the police?

Back on topic though, they need a warrant. If the warrant is a "blank cheque" as you call it then that's fine with me - a judge should have signed the warrant, so this means something serious was brought to their attention and they agree surveilance is necessary.

I don't see what's the fuss about the method. I would worry more about what safeguards are in place so that ISP don't start giving this information to security forces without a warrant.

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bvidulich

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Master Geek

#286865 4-Jan-2010 13:33

a judge should have signed the warrant, so this means something serious was brought to their attention and they agree surveilance is necessary.

Very good point. Didn't think about that.

I just don't think they should be able to intercept everything unless absolutely neccessary. I guess the judge would have to take this into consideration though when they sign the warrant.

Your right that there isn't any worry if I'm not doing anything wrong - and I'm not, I just don't like laws which give the authorites much more power than what is needed to get the job done.

timestyles

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#286876 4-Jan-2010 14:01

The thing is that some judges are more lenient than others. If the police goes to one judge, who turns them down for a surveillance warrant, they'll just go to an 'easier' one. Then they will trawl through the data. Probably every click is being recorded, but not what is typed into a browser. In other words, the ISP can tell that I replied to this thread. They don't know what I'm typing into this text box (well they might, but that would use a lot of data storage I guess, plus I could use https if it were available). Then they see that I re-read the thread. They could correlate the time of my reply to the posting with what is in the website timestamps to see what I wrote (this is why some websites say "about 5 days ago" rather than list time and day).

Basically, the police (and SIS, maybe the CIA/FBI/MI6 as well) know what you read, as if you went to the library and someone stood over your shoulder and saw what you read when you were there.

Two solutions that I know of: use a proxy, preferably one that you pay for, and use encryption where needed.

What concerns me is what happens when the police 'lose' your data. I read a year or two ago that the police computer network was insecure, which means that maybe someone will steal or be given data. It has already happened with normal police records, don't say it won't happen with someone's browsing records.

BTW, people here should know in the interests of privacy that http://boardreader.com/ is caching Geekzone posts, although they seem to only in the last 3 months. That means that if you edit a post after you've posted it, Boardreader may contain the old edit.

browned

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#286878 4-Jan-2010 14:03

Well it will cost less for the Police and Courts to get the warrant sorted. I consider that a good thing considering our lack of Police resources and blocked up court system.

patatrat

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#286880 4-Jan-2010 14:03

freitasm:
I don't see what's the fuss about the method. I would worry more about what safeguards are in place so that ISP don't start giving this information to security forces without a warrant.

As far as I know, the issue here is that a single warrant can cover phone, e-mail, internet and text wire taps.

Currently, if the police have a warrant to search your house, they cannot also search your place of work, or your car etc without another warrant. This is to prevent 'fishing expeditions'.

The new law seems (to me at least) to go counter to this, allowing police to use a single warrant to tap into my cell phone, home phone, e-mail and internet activities. I believe this is what the fuss is about, allowing more general warrants, rather than the specific warrants required in the past.

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cws82us

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#286882 4-Jan-2010 14:14

that tells you they getting ready for the end times. soon we will have to get chiped. chiped = Mark. so they can track you. its not going good

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browned

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#286888 4-Jan-2010 14:22

freitasm: Wrong. You always have to worry. Who police the police?

We do, with the help of the media. Plus the politicians we vote in who review the laws, oh and the Police Complaints Authority.

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#286899 4-Jan-2010 15:31

And remember also people, they're going after the drug runners, the importers, and so on, the people sending emails and texts to organise the next shipment of $50,000 worth of ingredients from China to make P, the paedophiles in the process of grooming their next victim. They're not interested in checking on Mr and Mrs Bloggs who send the odd email and do a bit of internet banking.

As freitasm said, only a judge can authorise the warrant. The police have to apply for one using evidence of how the warrant will assist them in an investigation, so the OP's concern that our rights are being taken away to help catch criminals is unfounded simply because they are only targeting criminals involved in the types of activities I mentioned above, not general users like you or I, meaning either way this new law is not going to affect us in the slightest.

NZtechfreak

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#286920 4-Jan-2010 16:39

Police complaints authority? Don't make me laugh, its an internal body and should be done away with in favor of an impartial complaints authority.

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#286930 4-Jan-2010 17:10

NZtechfreak: Police complaints authority? Don't make me laugh, its an internal body and should be done away with in favor of an impartial complaints authority.

Internal to who? If you think it's part of the Police you might want to actually read a little more into the organisation.

It's also not called the Police Complaints Authority - it's the IPCA (Independant Police Conduct Authority) because it is totally independant and a standalone Crown Entity - it has nothing to do with the Police and is chaired by a High Court Judge.

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Jadefuzy

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#286942 4-Jan-2010 17:42

man if the police wanted to intercept me they might just use the Waihopai spybase in the Waihopai Velly im sure it would be powerful enough. At the end of the Day there's nothing much we can really do Big Brother is always watching us i wonder if they can track Sat navs?

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#286944 4-Jan-2010 17:50

very interesting ethical issues but firstly
- how many police officers do they employ? how many deployed to writing speed and txt tickets?

then the other comes - trading overall safety for privacy of a select few. that's assuming they're doing the right thing. otherwise it becomes wasting money and losing privacy of everybody (esp if their info gets left at the starbucks again).

i think it shares similarities to the superman eye body scanner at airports. sacrificing traveller's dignity (for the viewing - or feasting - of a select few) to protect traveller's lives. imagine if someone leaked them onto youtube - well the good news is they wouldnt leak mine body image haha - even if they did no one would click!

timestyles

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#286953 4-Jan-2010 18:12

Jadefuzy: man if the police wanted to intercept me they might just use the Waihopai spybase in the Waihopai Velly im sure it would be powerful enough. At the end of the Day there's nothing much we can really do Big Brother is always watching us i wonder if they can track Sat navs?

The Waihopai satellite dishes receive satellite communications. Most data on the internet goes through undersea cable because of latency issues (it takes a while for data to go to up to a satellite and back again). I have no idea what satellites they are listening to. I have always thought that you could work out what satellite they are listening to by listening in to the distribution of sound waves reflected off the dishes at different locations. As to whether it's worth the effort, probably not.

SepticSceptic

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#287151 5-Jan-2010 12:38

Yeah, and I'm sure all the professional crims and paedos don't know a thing about encryption, hidden proxies, embedding messages in JPG's and all that stuff.

Or even using a web mail draft folder !!! No email message sent, but easily accessible.

And the police will be able search your car for no reason whatsoever. Who knows what some previous passenger or car owner left something tucked away somewhere ;-0)

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