How is this different than refusing to tell where you've buried the bodies? Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?
Disclosing those keys is probably a serious legal decision. The police will copy your entire phone including any nude pics, saucy messages etc.
Given the absurd number of UK police who have gotten in trouble recently for sharing pictures of dead bodies it's understandable you wouldn't want to just give them forever access to that or take a decent period to fully consider.
if they can prove you were using the phone an hour ago that would probably do it
They can get away with it because it’s on a computer. The voters don’t care, and the MPs by and large don’t understand. Those who do would love the same principle to apply to the body case as well.
Of cases they consider more important are the late Aaron Carter's drug use, a mystery spiral in Alaskan skies, Russian ships accused of spying in Norway, how to combine Ramadan fasting with fitness, potholes in Uganda to name a few.
Now, I definitely prefer the US's stance of a password being illegal self-discrimination, but I don't think it's unreasonable to have built legal precedent around that other view.
Is that true though? Never heard that before.
It would be more equivalent to refusing to let the police search one room in your house after they’ve established a reason to believe that you might be hiding bodies in it.
> Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?
They haven’t assumed guilt of the suspected crimes. However, if they have sufficient reason to believe that evidence of a crime exists in a certain location then they can compel someone to provide access to it. It’s similar to how the police can search your private property if they have sufficient evidence that a crime has been committed
That said, I don’t know the standard of evidence necessary in the UK to get this far.
Put another way, the police do not require you to produce the keys to the subject of a warrant, they will enter by force if necessary. It's perverse that technology is different only because the police have no means of forcible entry.
No, it isn't. The police searching a room in my house doesn't require me to do anything. They can even do it while I'm in a coma or dead. It's nothing like forcing me to tell them my passwords or any other information.
The way I understand it, they don't accuse him of being a terrorist, they are accusing him of having information about terrorists and refusing to release them. To follow your analogy, the police doesn't think you are the murderer, but they believe you know the location of the bodies and accuse you of covering for the murderer.
It’s like if they were trying to search your house for the dead children but you say you’ve lost the front door key and accidentally put a forcefield around it. Did you really forget to deactivate the forcefield or are you obstructing justice?
It shouldn't but... Tacitus, 2000 years ago: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state".
And we have oh so so many laws.
[0] https://twitter.com/Mathieu2jean/status/1648394577449984014
- the onus is on _you_ to "prove" that you don't know it or have forgotten it - you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password
Anyone administering systems might want to think about this, governments aren't known for good security.
Even rape victims are demanded to hand over their phone before a case can proceed. Because of course the alleged perpetrator (rightly) refuses to, delete even unrelated stuff before handing over? Case dropped anyways.
There will certainly be more of this type of behavior, even in the US, and the rest of the world is about to realize why the US has the kind of constitution that it does.
also, the refusal to share passcodes and subsequent arrest is more common across the world then one would expect:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
in countries such as France, Australia, UK, Ireland, India, South Africa it’s pretty clear: refuse to give password > fine and/or jail.
in other countries such as the US, Netherlands, Spain, New Zealand, Germany, Finland things are more grey. most have a version of the “self-incrimination”, but they’ll just go around the suspect in order to get the data, or get the data and try their luck at trial.
and from what i’ve experienced first hand, the few arab countries i’ve visited will straight up assume you’ve got something to hide if you don’t unlock everything you’ve got on you.
I would expect citizens of Arab countries are treated very differently from visitors.
They have the audacity to expect justice so really bring in the government abuse themselves /s
I can see it working well politically for Macron to call for his release as a demonstration of civility and liberal virtue. However, before he swoops in, I suspect there is more to the story.
But why is the UK suddenly overzealously engaging with any EU process it can? It's insecurity given Brexit.
Importantly France could have nabbed him on exit or entry. Or requested extradition it did not.
Power over the people, including letting them sink into poverty and crime.
It's easier to hide under the covers and doomscrool than go out and throw a brick.
If you look at the news from 15 years ago, it didn't look any better:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/aug/18/met-police-...
In the US, you're correct that giving up a password is something understood to be protected under the 5th Amendment, whereas being forced to unlock by face or fingerprint is not[0].
In the UK, this is not the same. See point 59 of [1]:
> The power to search anything which the person has with them includes the power to search electronic devices, such as mobile phones. The person must provide access to any electronic device to allow for a search to be undertaken, including where access to a device requires the person to unlock a device through application of their thumb or finger, or any other form of access control (e.g. voice or face recognition).
[0] https://www.concordlawschool.edu/blog/constitutional-law/fif...
[1] https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...
In German law you don't have to assist law enforcement in building a case against you, so you don't need to provide passwords or say anything. But you can be forced to unlock your device via biometrics (fingerprint, faceID, etc.).
I'm not sure how it works, when law enforcement calls you as witness. The law changed a few years back, so you are required to assist them, but I'm not sure to which extent.
Both my laptops and phone I need to be the one actually typing or inputting the code, I know them through muscle memory and get tripped up those few times my laptop ask for my iphone pass code, as an example
So, in the context of this UK-focused article, you're giving people advice on how to evade a search that, in the UK, is legal.
Instead, I would suggest advocating for UK people and businesses to change the law.
The only thing that politicians are afraid of is the media, and British people are sheep who follow the prevailing media narrative. If you want to change the law in Britain: buy a newspaper publisher.
That made me think if I were in that position to hand over or unlock a device, I could imagine the stress of the situation causing errors or even wiping the device. I imagine would be hard to prove intent but probably more difficult to prove it was unintentional as well
I hope this continues to erode the standing of the UK as a travel destination.
Looks like UK is on the hard avoid list.
The US and UK are more similar than they are different.
0. Never take your primary personal or work cell phone to any demonstration
1. Cover your face, if you can, or wear anti-facial recognition makeup
2. Do not use social media from primary personal devices
3. Anyone intent on trying to join the cause is a cop. Until proven otherwise, anyone you meet is a cop
4. The standard response to any official questions in the future is to deny all allegations, keep quiet, and ask for a lawyer
[0] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI00002...
Cops/Feds can do parallel construction to nail you anyway. Use the fancy technology to discover what happened, build the case backwards with old fashioned techniques.
They never have to reveal the advantages they have, it's rigged.
5. record your interactions with anyone around you, specially cops
The number 0 point (not bringing your cell phone) makes it pretty difficult, so you need an everyday phone, and a dedicated "demonstration" phone.
Something along the lines of: It's okay when I do it, because my motives are pure, my cause is just. The ends justify the means.
With this sort of mentality, people have committed mass murder and earnestly believed they were the good guys. Millions upon millions have been murdered by people who were utterly convinced they were on the right side of history. Compared to that, police officers convincing themselves that it's okay to violate the civil rights of a publisher is child's play.
One can't imagine this being done on a member of the house of commons, house of lords, famous bbc actor or personality or even a non-famous British subject and you might get rather a lot more pushback than doing it against a Frenchman nobody has heard of.
I think it would be horribly naive of us to not assume these kinds of considerations were discussed extensively prior by the police involved and their superiors. Remember when it was said repeatedly by politicians that just this sort of thing would never happen. When the power exists it will find a way, every time.
There was a time when a publisher being kept in jail for years on a mere accusation in a country he's not visited that he may have breached a law universally regarded as utterly absurd by legal scholars would be something for which the air of the UK was too free to even countenance, whatever one's views of the man but that man is Australian, you know and he was also accused of rape, which seems a very, very weak accusation all this time later and also antisemitism, for which we haven't seen any evidence. Take out the support of the person and personality when doing a power grab. Is it policy or simply repeated coincidence?
The person and personality does not matter - they can be as big a scumbag as possible and that should be of zero consequence. The principle really, really, really does.
Now we watch for leaks and stories about just what a reprehensible human being this previously anonymous French publisher really is so no matter that you're losing your rights against warrantless search because you're not a French publisher accused of something, nor an Australian... Don't you worry about it, just leave it to the police who are never corrupt, never criminal, never abuse power, never rape, never murder, never derail nazi thug murder investigations because they're friends with one of the thugs drug-dealer parents. The British police want no oversight because they clearly need no oversight. Although I'm sure Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or (insert current object of the hate) would agree with any dissent on the matter.
Seriously what the hell?
> A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.
> Ernest Moret, 28, a foreign rights manager for Éditions la Fabrique, was approached by two plainclothes officers at St Pancras station on Monday evening after arriving by train from Paris to attend the London book fair.
Why would he even be questioned in the UK for this at all? Did France issue an arrest warrant? If so, then wouldn't the UK just go through the normal process of extradition? What the hell does any of this have to do with the UK?
> “On Tuesday 18 April, the man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of wilfully obstructing a schedule 7 examination, contrary to section 18 of the Terrorism Act 2000.”
So this is just the UK's more eloquent version of America's "arrested for resisting arrest"?
Yes, because the Overton window has slipped so far, we are in a situation now, that in the 1970s people would easily class as a police state. Mass Internet surveillance, with complete dossiers on every web user being compiled by GCHQ, the criminalization of possession of data, which is a thought crime, yes prison for possessing certain books that are legal in the US. The list goes on and on.
All supposedly to protect us from some minor threat, whatever is in vogue as the latest moral panic (e.g. terrorism, child pornography, petty harassment, etc.). All while so many more people are killed or harmed in road traffic accidents each year than from all of those combined.
It really is nothing but excuses for authoritarianism. Yes, fascism, in disguise there. I don't even want to imagine what things will be like in 20-30 years time for now, if it continues at this rate.
So they wouldn’t charge you based off a random anonymous tip off. It would more be, a naked child was found in your house and now they’re charging you for not giving them the tapes with the videos on it.
You then aren't breaking the rules, as far as I can tell. Of course you can't give them something that is only available in another country, where those laws would not hold up.
This is a good reason to use numbered, pre-made, one-time-passwords and require a reason when using them. "AdminX lost fob - using override to reset creds." Requiring you to lie is one step past requiring you to remain silent.
If the 'next PW to be used' number increased on everyone's override-PWs it couldn't be hidden. Co-admins could know to check an audit log of changes.
Come again? I don’t catch the meaning of this.
- the onus is on _you_ to "prove" that you don't know it or have forgotten it
- you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password
So for example, you can be instructed not to tell your accomplices that their security is now compromised because every secret you had is no longer secret.
Technically they do as seen in the San Bernardino shooter case, it's just expensive
Would he have applied the same label to the same things under Obama later? After all, the later president expanded on nearly everything Bush did and took it to new levels. Trump after him did the same thing in many ways too.
In all cases, criticism is often divided along ideological lines against tendencies that can be used in either direction with just as much evil or authoritarian intent, and this selective blindness by critics becomes idiotica and absurd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding
Apparently there was Soviet influence on the Labour party and it was going on for decades, and may explain its particularly nasty authoritarian streak. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225637/How-Kremlin...
From that Daily Mail article (2009):
" The unpalatable truth is that many ministers in Government today rose through the ranks of a British socialist movement that was heavily influenced - and even controlled - by the Kremlin in Moscow. "
" As the Spectator says: 'Indeed, New Labour, which has governed since 1997, cannot be understood unless these communist influences are taken into account. 'Many of New Labour's characteristics - its deep suspicion of outsiders, its structural hostility to democratic debate, its secrecy, its faith in bureaucracy, the embedded preference for striking deals out of the public eye, and its ruthless reliance on a small group of trusted activists, result from the lengthy detente with the Kremlin.' "
So russia is not only causing trouble in Ukraine, it also seriously affected politics here in the UK. And it might be why we are living in such a precarious situation, when it comes to our liberties, here in 2023.
Or, more likely, they would do both.
They would drill it, and prosecute you for failing to comply with a valid court order (obstruction of justice, interfering with an investigation, contempt of court, or whatever...).
In most countries I have visited, visitors get away with a lot, because they want tourists, and because the tourists are relatively wealthy. In the UAE you are relatively poor compared to the citizens.
Relevant in New Zealand a few years ago: https://google.com/search?q=british%20gypsies%20%22new%20zea...
It's an almost symbiotic relationship with the government.
Yes, I was so outraged and shocked from it, what the government was doing, specifically regarding Internet pornography, that I had "moral injury". A condition not dissimilar from PTSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury
We are living in the 21st Century and we are still behaving, on some level like it's 1692. The year when the Salem witch trials were carried out.
And few people speak up about what's going on. They consider it normal. Because of how the Overton window works. How the frog has boiled so slowly over the decades.
Time for a cypherpunk revival.
Use malware to actually install sharing software and hide it from the user and at the router. Then use actual full-disk encryption software and make a real hidden partition and dump the bait files from the file sharing into it and leave the forensic traces. Then wipe the malware and delete the password and the FDE is unopenable but the courts will never believe the user.
Or just a Nandroid[0][1] backup and flashing the stock rom before you go, then restoring upon return.
[0] https://www.howtogeek.com/240582/how-to-back-up-and-restore-...
[1] I don't know if this is possible with Apple phones, as I don't use them. Perhaps someone could elucidate on the viability of this option for iOS devices?
And presumably did not arrest him on exit!
But I'm afraid since Brexit the UK gov has fallen over itself backwards to look like it's still able to work with EU agencies. It's more valuable to them to overzealously agree than to resist when we had a secure table at the EU table.
What are the tangible pro's and con's of Brexit?
IIRC, EU membership forced Scandinavian countries to broadly weaken regulations on toxic substances and discard the precautionary principle.
Would UK on Euro subsidize worse economic performance of other nations?
What is the new, actual situation in N Ireland in terms of trade, regulations, and standards?
What is it with English Speaking Countries ? I guess Canada is OK because of Quebec keeps them sane :)
Legal systems based on common-law?
I ordered a new SIM card which was luckily enough. But sometimes you store something in muscle memory, not number memory.
the prosecution would show up with when you bought the phone, how many times you'd used it, that you used it 80 times in the last hour, and so on
and it comes down to whether or not a jury would believe that you had really forgotten it (despite that evidence)
I had gotten used to putting in the passcode without even seeing the screen and completely lost this muscle memory at the time of the accident - likely due to high stress. I did not remember it later either - it was like my mind just rejected the memory and simply couldn't place out what were the exact digits.
Became far more understanding of my parents forgetting stuff after that incident.
Anyways, the point is that you can un-believably forget the phone passcode at a time of stress. Sure, some cool-as-cucumber humans will never forget anything, but the vast majority of people are not like that.
Quebec for the win :)
Hitting a panic button would mostly likely qualify as evidence tampering, disruption of investigation, or evasion of justice.
but playing devil's advocate, without this specific offence the disclosure sections would be completely ineffectual
(remember the UK also allows adverse inferences to be made from silence, it is not the US)
Even in the US, the law has changed rather drastically[0]:
“The only way to prevent the government from introducing evidence of the suspect's silence at trial is to explicitly invoke (assert) the right to say nothing. In other words, without being warned by the police or advised by a lawyer, and without even the benefit of the familiar Miranda warnings (which might trigger an ‘I want to invoke my right to be silent!’), the interviewee must apparently say words to the effect of, ‘I invoke my privilege against self-incrimination.’”
[0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-how-invoke-your...
Remember this important advice—shut the fuck up. https://youtu.be/sgWHrkDX35o
I think it's that, after a fascist government is ousted via violence, people spend so much time and effort to demonize them, that Joe Blow on the street doesn't see them as 'Us' anymore.
We would never make decisions like They made, so We don't have to worry if Our leader is a fascist. Our leader is nothing like Their leader was, other than in absolute power. Our leader has our best interests in mind. Their leader was just a power hungry madman.
When we remove the humanity from the monsters, we fail to remember that we could be monsters, too.
> When we remove the humanity from the monsters, we fail to remember that we could be monsters, too.
I could not agree more.
Why did so many turn a blind eye to the Holocaust? Why did so many ignore the Holodomor? Why did no one stand against great evil?
Presently, there is debate about whether there is true Evil, as well as some absolute Truth. And if there's no foundation on which to build a case of "this is evil", then why would anyone act? Couple that with the fact that -- at least in the United States -- it is legal for the government to propagandize (re lie) the American peoples, and you have a perfect storm of stress and lies that leads to "I'm alone and there's nothing I can do in face of all that is terrible".
What is one man to do?
The one man at Tianeman Square became an emblem of standing up to tyranny. What if there had been another with him? Or ten more?
Solzhenitsyn claims that a little resistance would have completely disabled the Russian Communists.
If that holds true the next fews years are going to be interesting
It usually starts with lack of representation, then coercion and then compulsion. I'd say its probably closer to 60 years, all you really need is one bad large generational cohort to get the snowball rolling, and then it becomes almost impossible to reverse, 2 generations down; with the standard generational time period being 20 years.
I remember growing up reading Harrison Bergeron (in school) and always thinking there's no way such a system would ever come about by the will of the people... yet SF proves people are all too happy to implement such a system (tearing down gifted students for the perceived benefit of everyone else). SSDD.
US/UK/France, on the other hand...
https://elamerican.com/germany-mocked-trump-dependence-on-ru...
Eh, the Parliament Act 1911 was passed by a Liberal Government.
> who utterly failed to anticipate how fascism could easily manifest through such a system.
The Liberal Party, and its successor the Liberal Democrats, has long been in favour of electoral reform.
The best is the unwritten rules. Which are ironclad and “part of the constitution of this country”, except when they aren’t and get just ignored because it’s convenient. But hey, every couple of years journalists can play fun what-if games tracking down ancient customs and speculate whether a 300 years old precedent could be used to behead the PM or some other nonsense.
And they now want a similar thing in the US:
https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2019/4/9/18300749/s...
There is no upper chamber that I know of (the Lords is legislatively dead, a strong government can simply ignore it), and the powers of the High Court, already diminished by recent reforms, are likely to be further curtailed very soon (read the tea leaves: the debate on "abusing judicial procedures to make law", once the remit of right-wing Americans, was the subject for an entire Reith Lecture cycle only a couple of years ago; after the Brexit saga, Tories will take an axe to the HC as soon as they can afford to do so).
And on top of it they claimed it was a success as failure rates went down. The failure rate went down because nobody was being tested.
https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/algebra-for-none-fails-in-...
> The district had bragged that algebra failure rates had dropped. Families for San Francisco, a parent group, analyzed the data: Failure rates dropped after the district dropped the end-of-course exam.
unless ofcourse we get WWIII early due to Russia....
And was never seen again. :/
I'm not sure where the line in the sand is.
The Russian civil war lasted six years, was a bit more than 'a little resistance', killed ten million people, and it didn't quite achieve the desired effect.
If anything, it grew and encouraged the winners' paranoia, and put them on a permanent war footing.
... sustained by Labour MPs, and mostly in order to bust a ironclad Tory majority in the Lords that was effectively "ruining" every progressive bill.
It was then further strengthened in 1949 (Lab) and 1999 (Lab).
I mean, there is no shame in this: it was a worthy and progressive cause to drag a XVIII-century model (kicking and screaming) into modernity. It's just a shame that the execution was fairly poor, particularly in 1999 - when there was a unique chance to build something more theoretically sound, and (unlike 1911) there was a lot of history to learn from.
Labour's position changing from 'abolish the house of lords' originally, to 'get rid of some hereditary peers' in 1999 was incredibly poor, as you say.
(and the Terrorism Act)
A recent effort to go "back to their roots" (the Corbyn years) ended with a stalinesque purge of such leader. Sadly this leaves free reign for upstart neonazi and neonazi-adjacent parties (BNP, UKIP, Brexit Party/Reform UK...) to rip through traditional Lab heartlands.
Yes, the Scottish Hate Crime bill. And as expected, they are trying to expand it to cover misogyny. So someone's going to end up serving time for a silly joke they made in a pub.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scots-give-backing-to-mak...
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/11/why-misogyny-must-n...
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/16/dont-make-misogyny-...
I think I should be able to tell a joke "Two catholics and a jew ..." as long as it's not a veiled way to call for harm to anyone, and I don't think a joke about the sexes in a similar vein should be a problem.
But, if you physically attack a catholic because they're a catholic, or a woman because she's a woman, then that is a hate crime - where you're just looking for someone of a class you don't like to inflict punishment on. A sentencing modifier doesn't seem like a bad idea.
If we break down what you're saying, you're saying it's acceptable for the government to punish and "readjust" (euphemism for re-educate?) someone for mere speech, including /in the "privacy" of their own home/?
Attitudes like this are unfortunately prevalent in Europe, or these types of laws wouldn't pass. I reiterate my earlier comment, that only the US has any real protection for freedom of speech.
I think this needs justification. There is no evidence that Clinton has ever been in favour of socialized healthcare for example, investment in which was a major tenet of the Blair platform.
On healthcare, the difference was due to the starting points in the two countries. What eventually turned into "Obamacare" was a push started under Clinton to address the obvious shortcomings of insurance-based healthcare in the US, providing an approximation of European universal-healthcare principles that could actually be applicable to the US context. Hillary Clinton was a massive supporter of that effort, effectively the link between the two Democratic presidencies. It just so happened that, because of the specific peculiarities of the US system (i.e. massive lobbying and astroturfing from insurance and healthcare giants), the actual law eventually morphed into what Obama enacted.