Original Article

The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to perform remote searches into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

Remote Searching - what's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? The home office might call it "remote searching" however it might just be better described as HACKING!

A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years.

Note the "detect" here. The reason these searches are happening without a warrant is because for a warrant you need at least have probable cause that a crime has been committed which is something you don't have as that was what you were trying to "detect" in the first place.

Police say that such methods are necessary to investigate suspects who use cyberspace to carry out crimes. These include paedophiles, internet fraudsters, identity thieves and terrorists

And there we go again! The government's "one size fits all" argument for just about anything nowadays: "The fight against terrorism" & "Saving the children". Really you could argue that with the internet as it is everyone that has access to the internet could have illegal porn or bomb making instructions not to mention detailed maps and pictures of important landmarks. And lets face it everyone could potentially be anything, that's kind of what the word "potentially" is all about (with a possibility of becoming actual) so why not a terrorist or paedophile?

But seriously since when has the Police turned into some sort of a religion where "belief in the absence of proof" is not only required but even encouraged to serve the greater good? I'm pretty sure we have an other word for propositions which are considered to be true simply on the basis that it has not been proven false - a fallacy (argumentum ad ignorantiam). But apparently fallacies is all we need in our modern society when it comes to policing, or to quote Farmer Hoggett from the 1995 movie Babe: "That'll do, pig. That'll do."

(Edited by Chambler 05/01/2009 14:24)