Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dane-pgp 2074 days ago
While it is lawful for your government to bug your home, it is also legal to own a home that doesn't have a telescreen or to remove a bug if you find one.

Laws against E2E encryption effectively mean that it is illegal to use a communications technology that is hard for the government to interfere with, even if you are not using it to break any (other) law, which seems like a change from the status quo.

1 comments

You say that, but in at least one case [1], you can be charged with stealing government property if you remove a bug from your car.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/man-charged-with...

That case did come to mind when I wrote my previous comment.

> After waiting another 10 days to see if it would start working again, detectives applied for a warrant to search Heuring's home and a nearby property belonging to Heuring's parents. ... Police did find the tracking device.

It sounds like the suspect moved the bug from his car into a house. If you were to move a bug from your living room to your attic (and place a sign at the location of the original bug saying "The bug is now in the attic, feel free to collect it when you find this note") then it might be harder for the police to claim you had stolen it.