Police seek new powers to prevent paedophiles hiding data

By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

THE Government is proposing new penalties to stop terrorists and other criminals using technology that prevents police accessing information on a suspect’s computer.

Terrorists do not use encryption to hide their data. This is a lie. This is why the laptop that was aledgedly found by security forces was able to be read. Remember the ‘terrorists using steganography’ hysteria from a few years ago? Read it:

The rumors about terrorists using steganography started first in the daily newspaper USA Today on February 5, 2001.

The articles are still available online, and were titled “Terrorist instructions hidden online”, and the same day, “Terror groups hide behind Web encryption”. In July of the same year, the information looked even more precise: “Militants wire Web with links to jihad”.

A citation from the USA Today article: “Lately, al-Qaeda operatives have been sending hundreds of encrypted messages that have been hidden in files on digital photographs on the auction site eBay.com“. These rumors were cited many times – without ever showing any actual proof – by other media worldwide, especially after the terrorist attack of 9/11.

For example, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that an Al Qaeda cell which had been captured at the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan had had pornographic images on their computers, and that these images had been used to hide secret messages (but no other Italian paper ever covered the story).

The USA Today articles were written by veteran foreign correspondent Jack Kelley, who in 2004 was fired after allegations emerged that he had fabricated stories and invented sources.

In October 2001, the New York Times published an article claiming that al-Qaeda had used steganographic techniques to encode messages into images, and then transported these via email and possibly via USENET to prepare and execute the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack.

Despite being dismissed by security experts [3][4], the story has been widely repeated and resurfaces frequently. It was noted that the story apparently originated with a press release from “iomart” [5], a vendor of steganalysis software. No corroborating evidence has been produced by any other source.

Moreover, a captured al-Qaeda training manual makes no mention of this method of steganography. The chapter on communications in the al-Qaeda manual acknowledges the technical superiority of US security services, and generally advocates low-technology forms of covert communication.

The chapter on “codes and ciphers” places considerable emphasis on using invisible inks in traditional paper letters, plus simple ciphers such as simple substitution with nulls; computerized image steganography is not mentioned.

Nevertheless public efforts were mounted to detect the presence of steganographic information in images on the web (especially on eBay, which had been mentioned in the New York Times article).

To date these scans have examined millions of images without detecting any steganographic content (see “Detecting Steganographic Content on the Internet” under external links), other than test images used to test the system, and instructional images on web sites about steganography. […]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

And there you have it. This story is yet another lie trolled out by brainless journalists with nothing to write on a slow day. There is no counter argument, no real information, just rabid whipping up.

Senior police officers have warned ministers that their investigations into serious crime are being thwarted by safety technology, which conceals data held on computers. Terrorists and paedophiles are using devices available on the internet for as little as £20 to keep data on their computers hidden from the authorities.

This is proof that the journalist who wrote this doesn’t know what he is talking about, and did not take the time to consult someone who does know what they are talking about.

No one with a single brain cell uses ‘devices available on the internet for as little as £20’ this is a lie. Everyone who encrypts their data does so with free software tools like PGP. None of these people are terrorists.

The encryption technology is being used by “terrorists and criminals to facilitate and conceal evidence of their unlawful conduct so as to evade detection or prosecution”, according to a Home Office consultation paper.

This is another lie. If the police have reason to think that a crime has been committed, they will not need new powers to demand the keys to decrypt someones photos in order to catch them. All they need to do is to clandestinely break into the users house and install keystroke capture dongles or software on the criminals machine. They will then be able to capture any password that they need to decrypt the criminals files.

This would mean that law abiding citizens will not be penalized for putting their email into an envelope, or encrypting their laptop drives to prevent data theft should the laptop go missing.

The people who wite these consultaiton papers and the unqualified journalists who unquestioningly report the stories are computer illiterate to a man. It is absolutely sickening.

Encryption enables plain text to be turned into a non- readable form. The person who receives the encrypted text uses a “key”, or password, to return it to its original form. By refusing to disclose that to police, suspects can conceal any criminal behaviour.

No, by encrypting your information you can keep anyone from getting to it. This has nothing to do with ‘concealing criminal behaviour’. Once again, if the police have enough evidence to go to a man’s house and confiscate his computer, they should have enough evidnce to arrest and charge him. Chicken and egg anyone?

The consultation paper said: “Over the last two to three years, investigators have begun encountering encrypted and protected data with increasing frequency.”

What were the methods of encryption? Without this information, it is hearsay and computer illiterate nonsense. For all we know they may have come across password protected word files, and interpreted this as ‘encryption’. Reports without details are totally useless, except if your aim is to whip up hysteria.

The Home Office is planning to introduce powers that will require a person to turn encrypted information into a readable form, and is proposing harsher penalties for those suspected of child sex abuse.

If I am correct, we already have the dreadful RIPA could it be that this journalist is talking about the introduction of clause three?

Under the current law a person suspected of possessing indecent photographs of children faces only two years in prison for failing to disclose to police the key to encrypted material. But they could spend up to ten years in prison for possessing the indecent image.

Police say that the low maximum jail term for failing to hand over the key provides an incentive to plead guilty to that offence as, with early release, the suspect could be free after a year.

If the police already have a reason to suspect someone is guilty of this heinous crime, they should put in place an operation to intercept the perpetrators computer in a state that will allow them to read everything, ie, by logging his keystrokes in advance of any raid. The stupidity of these people is staggering, but not at all surprising; look at what just happened to those two poor saps who had their house turned over and one of them shot for no reason at all? How can we expect these keystone kops to be able to use keystroke loggers and surveillance equipment to catch bad guys? We cant. But what we can expect is more miscarriages of justice as they bumble their way into the 21st Century, and the last thing we need to do is give them more power than they can handle.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that he welcomed the consultation paper on increasing the sentence. He said: “What the criminal is trying to do by using this encryption is to avoid the full sentence. In essence, the failure to provide the encryption key is an admission of guilt.”

Computer illiteracy – its not just for labour anymore!

Honestly, the tories are still as thick as shit, and its a great pity and a big PITA that we have to support them thanks to the NIR.

Ray Wyre, a child protection expert, said: “If people really intend to get away with it then the move to encryption was always going to be the next issue for the police and government”.

This is nonsense. This moronic journalist should have consulted a COMPUTER AND ENCRYPTION EXPERT not a child abuse expert, since this paper is about encryption and not child abuse. How totally pathetic!

He said that police used software known as Encase, which allowed them to look at images on the computer, but with encryption they are unable to access the data. “In technology the offender has always been ahead of the police.

Take a look at the first google result for ‘Encase‘ (clearly a distortion of ‘In Case’). It costs $425. What the HELL are they doing using crappy software like this? Its is astonishing; you mean to say that they do not have a single person on their staff that can mount a windoze drive under linux and then run a simple perl script to sort all the files into directories for inspection? Is it really that hard? And just imagine, these are the guys who will be bringing evidence against totally innocent people!

“Encryption is a problem for the police because, if you cannot access the data, you cannot find out the extent of a person’s criminality or the danger they pose to society.”

So, the secure wipe features of the many free tools out there should be immediately outlawed, since a perpetrator could use this to completely erase evidence from their drives. Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve never heard of secure erase!

Margaret Moran, the Labour MP for Luton South, cautioned that the development of encryption would provide further opportunities for criminals. She told MPs when the Sexual Offences Act was being debated: “The concern is that the advent of strong encryption technologies gives criminals the opportunity to hide their criminal activities or to conceal other evidence.

Here comes new labour, same as the old labour.

“If a paedophile has on his computer files, e-mail messages, pictures or other material that discloses a serious sexual offence against a child — an offence for which he knows he could face a prison term of ten years or more — he could encrypt the lot and, if investigated by police, simply refuse to hand over the key to decrypt the files, thus making unavailable evidence of a serious offence.”

If one of these monsters has been sending email, the police should have been collecting the evidence while it was in transit, or by posing as monsters (of that type) so that they can have the evidence delivered to them directly. How stupid people like Margaret Moron are, how deep is the well from which they draw their stupidity?

Until the internet was invented, encryption was rarely used by the public. Encryption garbles data using irreversible mathematical functions. It is the encoding of data so that it cannot be read by anyone who does not know the password that decodes it. […]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,29389-2221574,00.html

Didnt he just say this? Clearly this is a cut and paste article done whilst rushing off to lunch. Bad journalism. Bad journalist.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 12th, 2006 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Insanity, Politricks, Software.