Posts by Dylan Reeve
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Why would he go to Hager once he had it? Clearly he felt he was the best person to deal with the material so I disagree. This was in the public interest and he knew it once it was in his hands and acted accordingly.
Once it was in his hands perhaps he did know it, but it's not remotely clear that he knew that ahead of time. And even less clear that if he had that it would somehow excuse the crime.
If the police chose not to investigate this high-profile case what precedent would that set? Could people start hacking business leaders and politicians on the suspicion that there might be some dirty dealings hidden in years of personal communications - all excusable if any questionable acts were reported to journalists?
I can hold that both the actions taken against Slater, and the actions that were revealed were wrong. And I don't think either should cancel the other out - both should be dealt with independently of one another.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
You mean like massaging figures in crime stats to maintain their budget?
No, that's not what I mean.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Hey witnesses don’t get all their stuff confiscated. Bloody simple as that. Get real.
Yeah, they do... all the time. Police seize material evidence very often.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Richard Aston,
I mean how serious is the theft of emails compared to say, assault, burglary, drugs or murder?
I guess it would depend on what evidence was found and what charges were laid, but Accessing computer system without authorisation carries a sentence of up to two years in prison. Accessing computer system for dishonest purpose may also apply and would be up to seven years.
Also I'm guessing that it would be possible that Facebook, Slater's Gmail and his web server could all be considered different computer systems which may then add up to multiple counts.
And if it were found that the same person instigated the DDoS attack at around the same time then that could be Damaging or interfering with computer system which is also up to seven years.
If the hacker were caught and found to be in possession of software for hacking then that could be another two years for Making, selling, or distributing or possessing software for committing crime
But I'm not a lawyer or judge, so in practice - who knows? But it's certainly not an area of law that's taken especially lightly.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Oh god, we're not going into a 9/11 Truth hole here are we?
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to politikiwi,
I expect that the content of the communications will be encrypted so as to prevent trivial interception. But encryption requires keys, and if the Police have taken all of Hager’s electronic equipment, there is a chance that they will also have taken (intentionally or by accident) copies of the keys used during the encryption.
You can bet there’ll be a thorough search of those machines for files like *.cer, *.pem, etc etc.
In the absence of evidence that they are not, any encryption or identification keys used to communicate with Nicky Hager should be considered compromised.
From what I know of Hager's information security policies I find it very unlikely that they'll be able to recover any such keys unless they had the technology and foresight to explore options for recovering them from RAM, but the chances of that being successful are remote at best.
That said, I'm sure Hager can create new keys to satisfy any of his contacts who are concerned. It seems silly to believe that Hager, given his work and beliefs about the operations and abilities of the SIS and GCSB didn't have a reasonably strong expectation that something like this (or something less overt) would happen at some point and take precautions against it.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Trevor Nicholls,
we know nothing.. so there’s nothing to know. yeah, right.
I didn't say that either.
But it's seriously ridiculous for anyone to be saying they know how better police time should be spent with no information at all on how it actually is spent.
-
Can you cite a single similar instance?
No, but then we probably hear about less than 1% of what the police do, we also know next to nothing about the police investigation - how many are involved, how long they've been working on it, when they started... nothing.
-
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Oh please. Are you seriously suggesting the police can do no wrong and should never be questioned?
Absolutely not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that questioning the resources they assign to one case with absolutely no information beyond the fact that five officers spent ten hours on specific action is baseless.
-
I'm not sure that anyone has actually said that Nicky should be immune to police action in respect of the complaint from Cameron Slater.
I think that's the bulk of the criticism in relation to this whole thing. Hager is a journalist, so the police searching and seizing his computers was wrong. Basically.
we see no action, thus far, on other equally (more?) serious allegations. And that smells funny to me.
Do we know that no action is being taken or will be taken?
The theft of Slater's data is a very obvious crime. There's really no scope for opinion or argument about whether it actually constituted a crime - it definitely was.
The allegations in Hager's book on the other hand seem, to me at least, to be much more complex. There are questions about what actions are criminal, who should be investigating, what the proper process would be... They seem less black and white. I certainly thing some are deserving of more investigation, but I can also see they less straight forward and may take longer - but I certainly hope to see things happening in time.