Australian police get go-ahead on spyware

HAHAHAHAHA

I hope they don't do something stupid like that here in the U.S.

Especially with all the free spyware cleaners, what a waste of resources that would be.


.......still...kinda funny though

 

If they put one on my computer, they would be bored to tears.

It would look something like this


Dim x as Integer
Dim y as Integer
Dim r as Long

x = text1.text
y = text2.text
r = x * y

msgbox "The Result is " & r

exit sub
Pretty boring to those who don't get it

 

"Tech-savvy criminals will be watching for this kind of thing, especially if they know that law enforcement agencies are using these techniques," Biviano said. "They can look at process lists, what is using memory on their PC and what applications are running. If they know enough about their computer, they will be able to detect the (spyware) programs."


So, what's the police up to anyway? Are they teaching criminals how to get rid of spyware?
Absolutely crazy, even the police are spyware themselves!
What the heck's goin' on!?

 

Sounds like a waste of time to me, it would be far simpler for the police to get the ISP to forward all their activities to them.

 

Australia seems to have an unusual number of "Surveillance Devices Act" legislation on their books...

Listening and Surveillance Devices Act 1972 (South Australia)
Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Victoria)
Surveillance Devices Act 2000 (Northern Territories)

and the one presumably being discussed...

Surveillance Devices Bill 2004

The bill itself covers the use of surveillance devices generally - the "spyware" angle appears to be a ZDNet flavouring and would surely be less effective than installing a specialised monitoring device (bug, etc). Having said that though, the awful HTML formatting on that bill does make it look like a typical spyware EULA...

For me, the most problematic part of the bill is section "18 What a surveillance device warrant authorises" - even if you were not under suspicion, someone with a warrant could force entry into your premises and connect a surveillance device to your electricity supply and phone line to monitor a neighbour. And subsection 3(g) says that you have to provide them with "assistance or technical expertise"!

 

Well......Oz was originally a penal colony!!!

 

We are in an interesting phase here in Oz.

We have a government in control of both upper and lower houses of parliament and determined to persue their agenda across many horizons.

Our cross media ownership regulations are about to be relaxed.

Our news is full of stories of gross moral turpitude and accusations of high level corruption are flying thick and fast. Personal accountability is a rapidly fading concept.

Situation normal

Under the guise of the "commonweal" we are under assault.

Check my post from one of the national newspapers

 

Scary!...Isn't it!!

Putting it mildly!!

?? Did your forget to attach??

 

Hmm, they'll have quite a time trying to get a trojan onto our systems ...

 

Imagine the fun watching them try

 

Under the terms of the bill, you'd be required to give them "assistance or technical expertise" in doing so by the warrant! Think it'll still be hard?

 

That is why it might be good to use several different security companies from several different countries, especially countries that have politics opposed to one another. I like that second point a view. Just a thought from a paranoid state of mind....LOL


Starrob

 

With TDS and DCS around I wonder if they really dare to infect people's computers with trojans. They're gonna be blacklisted for doin' that.

 

Attn BB:
Here is the article from the SMH

Will have to check DCS again

"Scenario one: a documentary maker, a publisher and an academic have their computer hard drives erased by a government "cleansing" squad because each has been emailed a politically sensitive manuscript. Fiction? No, it happened in Australia.

Scenario two: without your knowledge, police obtain a warrant to enter your house. They rifle through your belongings, seize some items and substitute them with others, copy documents and plant listening devices. They are under no obligation to tell you about it until six months later.

The stuff of George Orwell's novel 1984? Wrong again. The NSW Government plans to give its police such powers.

Australia's legal landscape has undergone a dramatic shift since September 11, 2001, and the rise of terrorism.

Governments, both state and federal, have significantly bolstered the powers of security agencies, giving them greater abilities to detain and interrogate people and carry out surveillance, all under the veil of unprecedented secrecy.

Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court noted in a speech last week that "17 items of legislation restricting civil freedoms" had been adopted by the Federal Parliament alone since 2001.

Whether the lawmakers have gone too far and stripped civilians of the civil freedoms once considered fundamental to the country's liberal democracy is a subject over which governments and lawyers are sharply divided.

Kirby said courts were, in today's environment, the "last line of defence for human rights, fundamental freedoms and individual liberty".

Dr David Neal, from the Victorian Bar Council, puts it this way: "The real substantive issue is whether we are giving away so much in this that the very things that we are trying to protect [will] be made the subject of governments which have an absolutely excessive power over their citizens."

Stephen Southwood, QC, the new president of the Law Council of Australia, believes governments

should have looked more closely at the police powers that existed before the avalanche of post-September 11 counter-terrorism laws. "We'd probably find they were more than adequate," he says. "We've kind of abandoned too readily our existing criminal procedures and [are] potentially doing enormous damage to fundamental principles ... We are in effect substantially changing the nature of our society."

The federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, dismisses the dissidents from the bar as "the squeaky wheel". He

points to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which "imposes upon governments a responsibility to protect people's right to life, their safety and their security".

Among the laws introduced since September 11, 2001, are terrorism offences, making it a crime to commit, train or prepare for a terrorist act or be a member of or support a terrorist organisation. The attorney-general has a new power to unilaterally proscribe terrorist organisations; the former presumption in favour of bail has been reversed for people charged with terrorism offences; and minimum non-parole periods have been introduced for convicted terrorists.

Consorting laws making it an offence to associate with a terrorist organisation were passed despite a bipartisan Senate committee saying they were unnecessary and could trap journalists. And the intelligence agency ASIO was given the power to detain and interrogate for up to a week people aged 16 and over with information about terrorist activity.

And there are more laws on the way. Ruddock plans to introduce three more counter-terrorism bills, forcing defence lawyers to undergo vetting by the government before acting in terrorist cases, and allowing the prosecution to withhold evidence from accused terrorists and their legal team.

The Carr Government is planning to introduce covert search warrants, and increase the maximum time police can conduct bugging operations from 21 to 90 days.

Professor George Williams, of the University of NSW, is concerned that most of the new laws, apart from the ASIO detention regime, do not have a requirement that they be periodically reviewed to see if they are still needed.

He also worries that some traditional protection of the Australian criminal justice system, such as press freedom to report on investigations, has been removed. "The inability to bring to light abuses [of power is] a significant infringement on freedom of speech, and if bad things are happening it undermines your ability to find out about them," he says."

BTW is anybody else having trouble attaching docs.
I cannot upload a link for this file as usual.

Regards

 

I should imagine no Govenment in their right mind would use a standard piece of spyware, keylogger or whatever. They would more likely design their own tool.

Jimbob

 

They would design something extremely sophisticated, so difficult to remove even the best expert can't get it.

 

Or there is another way. You make the file appear like a virus after it has done its job. The user if doing something illegal will not send any information off to the company who supply the anti-virus software.

Brilliant idea even if I do say so myself

Jimbob

 

100kb limit??

 

LOL...