This is part of the Search and Surveillance Bill 2009

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2009/11/priva ... _bill.html

I haven't read this piece to the end yet, but does anyone know anything about this bill? do people think that the state hacking into your computer remotely without notifying you before or afterwards, can be justified if they have a search warrant? (assuming the search warrant is for something not related to IP)

discuss.

I'm not sure but i think i have heard something about this. I thought they were allowed to hack you even with out a warrent. But in saying this, Even if its NZ law, will it match other laws in other countries about hacking?

I find that police hacking you is very invasive. What is you have important work files on your computer that must not be disclosed? Or in a extreme case, what if you worked for Apple and they found the newest mac thing on your computer?

The owner should always be notified before hand. Whether it be a just-in-time notification (Say, a system message saying "The Police are currently investigating your system through a remote connection.") or something else. They should always notify the owner.

Of course, encryption is a tool to be used: If you've got nothing to hide, hide it anyway.

(Where Police are just used as a logical example...I haven't yet read the article or noticed any used of "Police" in the article).

Hmm, see dmca.cs.washington.edu for the excellent paper "Why my printer received a DMCA takedown notice."
The thing is, if we can't get surveillance to accurately distinguish innocent IP connections from actual pirates, why the fuck should we allow the police, the meat board, the pork board, MAF, customs, immigration, IRD or any other clueless bureaucrat who got some help from GCSB, hack our computers?

Fuck that shit, I've got commercially sensitive information which is not to be trusted to faceless civil servants. I'm going to keep it offline and hidden until I get my security system going.

I agree entirely with the above sentiment. The thing is people seem so ready to give away their privacy. I feel that having something to hide or not is irrelavent and besides the point, a persons actions should be private unless sufficient cause is given to use such techniques.

When people who enforce the law break the law to enforce the law you have to start asking questions. Police are only human and power corrupts and there are recent recorded events in which police have used privates information for personal reasons.

A message saying "The Police are currently investigating your system through a remote connection" would make me dive for my router which would properly get me charged with tampering of evidence or disputing a police officer on duty or what ever its called.
Then how long is it until this software they use\bought it leaked onto the internet and every script kiddie gets a new toy.

Oh that leads to all kinds of problems, not the least of which being the technical issues (how are they going to "hack" any computer at random, even if it is connected to the 'net?).

If it's okay to break into your Google account, and Google's servers are in the US, not only is Google going to be pissed off, but they've also broken US laws in the process (unless they've made arrangements otherwise, but I'm not aware of anything like that).

They'd need some form of dedicated back-door software to get into private, personal computers. Unless they expect everyone to voluntarily do that (good luck), or make it mandatory (which seems right up the alley of these fascist types), I don't know how this is more than clueless bureaucrats making noise, as usual. When lawmakers don't understand how technology works, you get laws that reflect that ignorance.

Exactly. Very well written as well Matt.

1. Only way you can guarantee hack-proofed computing is to use OpenBSD, if you can get it going, it has almost perfect removal of errors in the codebase.
2. Google accounts are subject to the NSA/FBI monitoring program called EINSTEIN, which is mainly about catching terrorists, not pirates.
3. It's called Windows, and it's got more zero-day exploits for everyone who doesn't update their system than any other system.

These are the same people that haven't realized BitTorrent has replaced Limewire, or that Internet filtering can be circumvented in under 5 minutes. I'm not exactly confident in their ability to hack anybody's system (or realize that there are other OSs besides Windows ).