OI mate, you got a loicense for that operating system?
The only surprising thing about this story is that the user didn't get a visit by the police to be charged with a "non-crime cybersecurity incident". The UK has become such a shithole.
> Yep, police can simply ask anyone for their passwords and if you don't give it up they can put you in jail.
This is precisely the reason why I don't want to visit the US at the moment.
The USA immigration officers can ask me to forfeit my phone's password and look at all my photos, documents, messages, call logs etc, WITHOUT SUSPICION.
Some of that data can even stay on their servers for decades, and who knows if it ends up on a CIA/NSA server.
Of course, I can always refuse, but non-cooperation with CBP means immediate denial of entry and risks of lifelong headaches with future immigration checks.
Me too. I’m going to wait a few more years before I visit again.
I‘m also careful with what I say online. US CBP tracks what people post online, and has been known to deny entry to people for being critical critical of the current president. I don’t want to risk losing out on future opportunities in the land of the free.
I‘m also careful with what I say online. US CBP tracks what people post online, and has been known to deny entry to people for being critical critical of the current president. I don’t want to risk losing out on future opportunities in the land of the free.
I will rather choose not to visit the US for the foreseeable time, maybe never again (have been to the US more than 10 times). Freedom of speech is more important than tourist visits to the US. Well and working there was never an option for me, worker protection, universal healthcare, etc. make life much nicer.
Maybe the US will be free enough again in the future, but with its trajectory, I am not betting on it.
I have really, really, really bad news for you about any modern SoC, including all those by Qualcomm. Their ROM private keys are widely available to the three letter agencies. Your OS, while cute, provides no protection at all to anyone who has physical access. Secure boot root keys give away the whole kingdom
At least you can walk in with a phone reset to factory settings, and once you cross the border restore from the cloud (or home server like me). In UK you can be stopped walking on the sidewalk. It's much more dystopian in UK.
Any good examples of that happening? As far as I know, the police have to have a probable cause to stop and search you, but they can certainly ask you to stop and answer questions to which you can ask "am I being detained" if you object to their questions.
Sort of. It's also footway when denoting the no-carriages part of a road that also has a carriageway.
There's a whole complex terminology of footway, cycleway, bridleway, bridle path, footpath, cycle path, and carriageway. Even more fun: It's ever so slightly different in Scotland to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
I haven't written up an article about it yet, but from a cursory look of the legal stuff this only affects private citizens and could be circumvented by setting up a shell company that owns your devices.
Legally, you can't surrender these devices, access to them or their passwords, as they are company property.
There's what's legal, and then there's what the border guard with a hemorrhoid flareup decides to do on the spot. One pain in the butt can cause you a lifetime of pain in the butt even if it wasn't the intent of any legislator.
Indeed, but the UK is in many ways words. At the least in the USA, often the constitution is upheld (give or take); in the UK you often don't even have such fundamental rights. The UK at present fits more to Russia than, e. g. European countries.
> At the least in the USA, often the constitution is upheld
Some of ICE’s detainees may have different opinions on that point.
The UK may endow her citizens with fewer rights. But I have a lot more trust in British due process. British civil servants seem much less … capricious than Americans.
I was almost denied entry to Hawaii once because I told the CBP agent I didn’t have any cash on me. (My money is in a bank account, obviously). He went on a big rant about how expensive Hawaii is. I think he was worried I’d end up homeless. (Even though my visit to hang out with my then employer.) Over the years I’ve heard so many stories from other Australian friends about wild and unfortunate encounters with US police and officials.
By comparison, the British government seems far more civilised. If something happened while visiting the UK, I have much more confidence that everything would be resolved in a fair and reasonable manner.
I had the same experience visiting the US - this was 15 years ago so I imagine it’s much worse now.
Got subjected to hour long questioning because I only had a little cash on me and told them truthfully that I would travel the country so I didn’t have one place to stay for the entirety of the trip (because I was TRAVELLING).
I since learned that my first mistake was to tell them the truth but alas.
After asking me about every single detail of my life they eventually let me in.
It’s a pity, such a great country being ruined by kleptocrats.
UK has (for now) the Human Rights Act and is a (for now) subject to the jurisdiction of (by being a founding member of) the European Court of Human Rights.
Which is not to excuse the errors, but to put it in context: it is a European country… albeit just like Turkey and Azerbaijan.
> In the UK I'd be worried about being arbitrarily arrested, deported, and banned from re-entry.
That's not going to happen unless you commit a serious crime, in which case it's not arbitrary. I can't think of a single case that's made the news.
Meanwhile across the pond in America you have the nightly news reporting on children and people in cages screaming. People being rounded up for not being white. Little to no due process at all until you've been through 6 rounds of hell.
This confuses so many people - the Uk has a series of constitutions and a very strong and historical legal basis for rights. It’s not strictly codified in one purposely written document but it does exist. And it’s a mistake to say if there’s no constitution then you have no fundamental rights. The UKs system is a hodgepodge but so is having a written constitution that can be regularly amended or otherwise ignored.
The problem with that view is that when the "strong legal basis" is not codified, and codified in a way that nonspecialists can at least vaguely identify and understand, it gets a lot easier to get away with ignoring it. Which the UK has been going hog wild doing in the last 20 years or so.
I am not saying the US is better in practice. The bottom line is that authority worshippers will take whatever liberties they can get away with in any system.
You are aware of the fact that you essentially have no rights at border crossings, right? Even if you are a US citizen entering the US.
This is why many companies have procedures for when employees visit certain countries, including the US. For instance that you are not allowed to bring your personal phone, your personal and work laptop or any medium that can hold sensitive or proprietary information.
Is this really the case? As far as I understand it, US citizens have an absolute right to enter the country. So they can sit you in a room and ask you questions all afternoon, but eventually they have to let you in.
Not sure if related but this is my story. I am Spanish. When leaving SF back to Europe from a Google IO, after control, waiting to scan my luggage, an officer stood besides me and started speaking in Spanish besides me.
The first minute my brain didn’t register because though Spanish is my mother tongue, I guess it was not ready for that. The police officer started to get irritated. Eventually my brain switched, I had a chat with him and he left.
I was totally freaked out the rest of the time, till the moment I boarded.
Only then I realized how frail our rights are when you are abroad.
I presume any journalist or competent protest organiser in the UK knows the details better than me, but they can't just stop you on the sidewalk (UK: pavement) and ask you to hand over your PIN on the spot.
I think the "put you in jail" thing is a misunderstanding of the general "police can detain someone suspected of a crime" principle, but then they still need to get a judge to approve them holding you longer than a few* days.
(*) The rules are slightly different for terrorism suspects.
Americans perception of themselves always baffles me. You have police brutality regularly, ICE raids shooting protestors and deporting people (inc those with the right to be there) to El Salvador, people who write critical articles of Israel denied visas, servicemen dying in the Middle East, your president openly stealing from your government via slush funds and his sons, and so little accountability that the only people facing consequences for Epstein are in Britain. Your news is owned by oligarchs who openly buy it to divide you and push their agenda not yours, your views barely matter as your politics is bought and paid for, your elections are rigged by gerrymandering so few incumbents ever lose. Then call yourself a democracy.
Absolute Mickey Mouse country singing itself propaganda about building the future whilst having a healthcare system that lets people die regularly for being too poor. Not exactly freedom if you’re dead is it?
Then they come to London and realise it’s just a much cleaner, safer, nicer looking city than anywhere in the US and has more culture, food and diversity than all but a few American cities. But have to justify going back to a chicken coop country where they grind out the prime of their lives, get no maternity pay, and like 10 days of holiday.
It's all extrapolated from a few articles where someone in Germany or the UK is arrested, but if you go beyond the tabloids it turns out that the person threatened to harm or kill someone online (which is not free speech in most European countries for obvious reasons).
I have lived in European countries all my life (except for ~6 months in Australia) and let's say I'm opinionated, I have never feared that the country I lived in or its authorities would arrest me or harm me otherwise. Of course, there are certain boundaries - you don't threaten someone, etc. But once you cross those lines, you are not interested in free speech anyway, only intimidating people or inciting hate.
That's all true, and I had a great time in London and many eu countries.
Do immigrants have the same full rights as British citizens?
Would I be willing to re evaluate my visa every X years? Will I be willing to be uprooted if it's denied?
And how will childcare work when my elders are all here?
I think your post was correct as far as the state of the US, but your final paragraph is reductive. It's not always easy for someone to drop everything and uproot their life, even if it's possible
An immigrant on a student visa was recently elected (or selected by the Green Party because of proportional representation) to be a member of the Scottish parliament. So it’s finally reached the point in the UK where citizenship confers almost no rights that can’t be obtained by anyone coming to the country, even temporarily.
I am an atheist and any country were a leader claims their country to be Christian is a no go for me. Is the separation of church and state a joke to Americans?
It was pretty funny because right next to Trump they had a man/woman in a Easter bunny suit.
I am also an atheist. Our country has christian prime ministers in the past. It was not a problem, because virtually all the christians that are left in our country (the majority of people are atheists of agnostics these days) believe in a separation of church and state.
It is not about christianity. Authoritarian and populist leaders will always coopt/corrupt whatever is convenient for them. Christianity, socialism, capitalism, whatever works to rally a substantial portion of the population.
A friend of mine visiting the US as a tourist with family was expected by immigration to provide lots of digital information and full access to every device at JFK.
They were held for more than 4 hours at the airport.
But, to counter balance, I had multiple other friends traveling to the US (both on work visas and tourist ones) and it was smooth sailing.
In any case, the story of my first friend is what made me cancel my US trip last summer and go to Japan instead.
The police can ask for your passwords. You're not required to give them anything until they apply for a Section 49 notice of RIPA. Which they must get from a Judge.
It seems to be recommended to refuse giving them the password before that notice is issued and seek a lawyer before complying.
If the judge agrees with them, you have to comply.
Yeah they can ask for passwords but I've seen so many people work around this by pretending they forgot. Because at that point what are they going to do.
Yet swatting, making police kick in the doors and shoot the dogs of someone who was victim of anonymous slander, isn't really a thing here in europe compared to the US.
The very politicized US courts that collude with and are completely in the pocket of whomever's running the country? More developed countries have a clear separation between the judiciary and the executive powers.
Even if you take the European Union alone and ignore all the other European countries, the EU only legislates over a subset of things for member countries.
This is not true – the police cannot "simply ask anyone for their passwords", and your oversimplification has resulted in this becoming a lie. I would really strongly recommend that you educate yourself first – by doing this, you contribute to the misinformation that is currently making much of the world an unpleasant place to be.
I think it’s true that declining to hand over a password in a criminal investigation is itself a criminal act in the UK. That said, I don’t know how often this actually occurs.
As an outsider, it seems to me (big talk on the Internet! Amazeballs) that UK laws are written to be illiberal and gradually watered down to an acceptable degree. I think that happened with RIPA and later with the whole nazi saluting dog mess. Whether they can survive the rise of free speech double talkers like Farage remains to be seen. But the Blair/Brown years made it clear that even supposedly intelligent middle of the road leadership is capable of imposing surprisingly illiberal legislation. I don’t much care for the Tories but I don’t think they have much interest in my personal life.
You need to be able to hand over encryption keys too.
Claiming to not know them is also not allowed, whether you actually know them or not.
I am reasonably convinced that if you wipe the key slots on an encrypted drive but leave encrypted blocks around, they might be able to argue that you are obligates to store all the block keys for such an occasion. So using any kind of multi-tier encryption in the UK might be a massive liability unless you permanently store all the material required to derive any key that is used to encrypt anything.
This also probably has impact on TLS now that I think about it.
Now, real world criminal cases are likely to proceed differently than how they proceed in the mind of a programmer interpreting the law as a program. But, I am not too convinced such a farcical thing wouldn't happen, the UK government and police have engaged in much dumber things.
Now that I think about it, storing randomness on a disk could probably be used to incriminate you in case that disk was seized. Since the police wouldn't be able to tell if it wasn't encrypted data.
Not yet, but for a long time nobody spent years in court because they were particularly rude to nobody in particular on the internet, and then it happened, and the law was there all along.
This is the real endgame, and my biggest fear of the war on privacy. That in the future, even trying to assert your right to privacy will be grounds for suspicion.
It's gaming communities too. There is a massive mindset overlap between gamers and average UK residents.
They both think that all the dystopia is for the greater good, is never abused, and if you fall victim to it, you must have been doing something dodgy to deserve it.
Non-crime hate incidents 1) never lead to people being charged, and 2) recording of them has been greatly reformed following a court ruling and new legislation
I agree there are a lot of problems (e.g. the online safety Act) but it look as though both the rest of Europe and the rest of the west is going the same way.
I also assume this incident was not in the UK as the details were shared on imgur which blocks the UK. The authorities also do not seem to have taken any action. Anyone can report anything they want.
Yep but they live with you for life on a DBS check, and you know that we brought up in a court of law if anything else happens to be against your favor
1. That is one reason why the rules were changed to reduce the level of recoding
2. It would only be disclosed on an enhanced DBS check, not basic or standard. This also applies to all other information the police have on you, not just NCHIs. This is just like the rules for disclosing something like a caution issued to someone in your household, an aquittal, allegations made against you, parking and speeding tickets etc.
"Non-crime information can be disclosed on an enhanced DBS check – which is limited to high-risk positions like teachers and carers – but only with the approval of a chief officer. The chief officer must have regard to statutory guidance issued by the Home Office and consider whether the applicant should be allowed to make representations before any information is disclosed."
If they're turning over all information the police have it makes sense this gets turned over... Or do you want the police to not have any record they spoke to you, so they'll come tomorrow and say the same thing again, and again, and again?
Example H above is in my view a good example of something should be recorded. A single incident is not a crime, but repeating that conduct could constitute a criminal harassment.
No, the "rest of Europe" is not going the way of outlawing e2e encrypted iCloud backups and other bullshit your shitty government is pulling on you, stop deluding yourself.
After having watched too many videos on Auditing Britain, I can not trust the UK cops. In some ways they are worse than US cops, except for shooting down people, where US cops still lead negatively here. Also, UK cops use many more words than US cops, without those words really meaning much at all. The amount of flabbergast-inflated text length is insane.
I won't be visiting. Despite many flaws, the US has some damn good rights for its citizens compared to the rest of the world.