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Police want access to your social media 'in minutes'

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the polis know that focussing on a tragic pretty teenager is more likely to produce public sympathy than if the victim were a middle aged victim of fraud.

Lucy's Law sounds much better than Trevor's Law....

Reply 21

Reue

Original post by ThomH97

nder what conditions, if any, do you think Facebook and other (social media) companies should provide the police with your password?

The same conditions as required for a house search warrent

Original post by ThomH97

And do you think it should be a crime of 14 months in prison for not giving your password to the cops or otherwise not answering their questions?

Absoloutly not. We should have the right to remain silent.

Reply 22

katf

Giving police access to private communications fails the bitter ex test. If communications can be accessed by someone other than the people writing and receiving the messages, then someone with an agenda can use it to ruin a life.

Passwords must, by their very nature, be kept secret. If they are stored in plain text anywhere, or if they can be decrypted easily, then anyone who uses that service can assume that every message they send is public.

Frankly I don't trust the police either. The idea that you have nothing to hide only works if you agree completely with the laws of the land and always will. This technology, if implemented in other countries, could be used to track down people suspected of being gay. Or of being a certain religion. Or who are critical of the regime.

Once they have access, what's to stop them manufacturing evidence? I don't believe there are safeguards possible to stop this from happening.

Reply 23

CoolCavy

Volunteer Team

Original post by Andrew97

Not sure if they would find much on my Facebook account.

lol same unless they have an extreme interest in guinea pig memes

Reply 24

StriderHort

Yeah I wouldn't be for it

Gaining access through facebook through application of a warrant or such when they have demonstrated under oversight that they NEED to is one thing, but just blindly handing over passwords? no, beyond my own privacy, that would also give them access to private information of a large number of other people which I feel I have no right to share, I have also effectively just gave them the ability to post and act on my behalf online and police aren't to be trusted.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 25

El Salvador

Original post by anosmianAcrimony

The court will say, ''Of course it's reasonable to give the police that password! If they misused it or even allowed it to be leaked, they'd be liable in all sorts of nasty ways.''

Of course it's reasonable to walk around with a million in cash in public view, if anyone robs or steals from me, they'd be liable in all sorts of nasty ways.

Reply 26

gjd800

Original post by CoolCavy

lol same unless they have an extreme interest in guinea pig memes

With me they'd find lots of rantings about Sanskrit, and maybe the odd Republican folk song.

Still don't want any state institution to have that sort of access, mind.

Reply 27

Haunt

If they were to do something, it should be resetting your password, not getting your current password as it could be very personal and be used on many other sites.

Reply 28

El Salvador

Original post by Sataris

What's the difference between this and refusing to let the police into your home on a search warrant?

You are not obliged to give the police the key to your house to search your house whenever they want, with or without your supervision.

Especially not when the key is the same as the key to your parents' house, your siblings' houses, your children's houses etc.

Reply 29

Sataris

Original post by The Champion.m4a

If you don't "give them your key" they'll find their way past your door through other means... Sometimes they don't bother asking first

And I think you're making a false equivalency there because your account will not hold as much info about your sibling as their account

Reply 30

El Salvador

Original post by Sataris

It's difficult because if there's a warrant, they'd searching for all my houses legally. But perhaps that tells you the difference in the nature of a key and a password.

No. I will open the door and let them search while I supervise. I'm not going to be staying in the police station while they take my key the do whatever they want. That's the recipe for manufacturing evidence.

Reply 31

StriderHort

Original post by Sataris

If you don't "give them your key" they'll find their way past your door through other means... Sometimes they don't bother asking first

Oh they can absolutely pass the door by other means, but they have to admit to it, 'We are breaking down this door because...' which means you can formally protest and object through a legal representative, plenty of search evidence ends up getting tosses because they've found to have broken a rule when searching. GIVE them the password? Insane, i'm legally responsible for whatever i post on it.

Banks are the EXACT same

Lost your cards? - we'll cover you
Ripped off by fraud merchant? - we'll cover you
Victim of hacking? - we'll cover you
violently robbed? - we'll cover you
..you voluntarily GAVE out your PIN? - Nothing covered, liable for all losses.

As an aside - What if I talk to my lawyer on Facebook? That' sounds like the sort of thing they're REALLY not supposed to access.

Reply 32

TheStupidMoon

Original post by Reue

The same conditions as required for a house search warrent

There doesn't appear to be very strong protections against them going into peoples houses either.

So much for human rights.

Reply 33

MrControversial

Lots of people confused here about how passwords work. Indeed, the password is probably hashed.

However that's not really what the police want, they're asking for access which is very different.

Facebook has full control over access and passwords are merely an access control they implement for common users.

Facebook can directly access their databases to extract data, change the password to a known one or implement an alternative method of logging into an account.

Reply 34

martin7

Original post by MrControversial

Quite.

These platforms need to implement a system so that law enforcement agencies, armed with a suitable warrant, can demand read-only access to a user's data and be granted it in a timely fashion.

They shouldn't need to be given a user's password -- but I suspect that's just sloppy understanding by politicians (or them trying to put it into language the voting public might understand).

But if the platforms don't implement a controlled method of granting access to law enforcement, then the only alternative will be to ask for the password.

Reply 35

martin7

Original post by Haunt

If they were to do something, it should be resetting your password, not getting your current password as it could be very personal and be used on many other sites.

If you're using the same password across multiple sites, you're asking for trouble.

If -- however it happens -- someone finds out your password on one site, they can then login as you on other sites.

You should have a separate password on each site; and use password manager software to keep track of them.

Reply 36

yudothis

Why should online content not fall under the same category as physical evidence?

If you get a warrant, you should get access to it.

Reply 37

MrControversial

Original post by yudothis

Why should online content not fall under the same category as physical evidence?

If you get a warrant, you should get access to it.

There's a difference between having a legitimate warrant for something like murder and wanting to practically monitor the internet almost in real time or to patrol it.

You can imagine that if the police were genuinely competent and not only well meaning but concentrating on purely genuine serious crime then what would be the harm?

Unfortunately, we have a whole bunch of moral laws, catch all laws, ideological laws and business that simply isn't truly relevant to police work. The police are by no means immune to human error or political coercion either.

It's bad enough that many outlets might gag you for criticising certain ideologies or political policy without also getting a knock on the door and a fishing trip from the police. The police unfortunately often merely become an enforcement arm of the government rather than serving the people.

There's a power issue here. The more you give, the more problematic. How far should powers over the internet go? Should the government have the ability for example to stop people from accessing wikileaks material? What about the power to censor reports of abuse of that power?

You also have to draw the line somewhere or should we give police unlimited and absolute power to prevent murder at any cost? I think if that were the case you would find worse life conditions than hearing about the occasional murder.

(edited 5 years ago)

Reply 38

yudothis

Original post by MrControversial

There's a difference between having a legitimate warrant for something like murder and wanting to practically monitor the internet almost in real time or to patrol it.

I understand. My point was, if they have a warrant, what's wrong with that? This guy is thought to have committed a crime, in the past they might get a warrant to search his house. Now they need a warrant to see if his messages back up the theory. How is that monitoring the internet in real time?

Unfortunately, we have a whole bunch of moral laws, catch all laws, ideological laws and business that simply isn't truly relevant to police work. The police are by no means immune to human error or political coercion either.

Not sure how this is any different for digital as opposed to physical warrants.

It's bad enough that many outlets might gag you for criticising certain ideologies or political policy without also getting a knock on the door and a fishing trip from the police. The police unfortunately often merely become an enforcement arm of the government rather than serving the people.

Oh brother I am so with you on this. Free speech is so under attack at the moment (did you hear about the guy who got fired from a free speech society position for saying "women don't have penises"). But at the same time I simply do not see any difference between digital and physical in case of a warrant.

There's a power issue here. The more you give, the more problematic. How far should powers over the internet go? Should the government have the ability for example to stop people from accessing wikileaks material? What about the power to censor reports of abuse of that power?

You also have to draw the line somewhere or should we give police unlimited and absolute power to prevent murder at any cost? I think if that were the case you would find worse life conditions than hearing about the occasional murder.

I think this is taking it a bit far. The equivalent would have been "can police randomly search people's homes without a warrant".

And the last part I simply cannot agree on. Often a crime can be seen to be building way in advance. E.g. someone receives threats, abuse and then death threats. I think if they go to the police with that, the police should very much start to monitor the person who is sending these threats. That's not benign. No upstanding citizen has their rights encroached upon if the police do start monitoring people threatening others.