Boost for Big Brother
The Sunday Times has reported that the government plans to make it possible for police or intelligence officers to remotely access the hard drives of private PCs, without a warrant, whenever they deem it necessary.
The euphemism for this Orwellian intrusion is "remote searching" and will presumably spawn a new government department called The Ministry of Privacy Protection, or something like that.
All that's needed to justify such a search is the belief on the part of a senior officer that it's necessary to prevent or detect a crime that would warrant (no pun intended) a jail sentence of over three years.
For some reason, civil liberties groups weren't too keen on the idea. "These are very intrusive powers - as intrusive as someone busting down your door and coming into your home," said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.
This is the second time the current administration has made clear its intentions to police individual use of IT in the past week. A call for restrictions on content ‘allowed' on the net by culture secretary Andy Burnham was met with derision in the HEXUS.community.
