UK Police Seek Increased Powers to Attack Web Sites

Under proposals given to UK Members of Parliament in the wake of the London bombings in July, police would be able to intervene in, disrupt and attack web sites that facilitate acts of terrorism. Such powers would also make it easier for police to pursue domestic extremism and paedophilia online. This is according to a list of recommendations made to MPs by The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ACPO). Under the proposals, it would become an offence to fail to disclose encryption keys and to use the Internet to aid acts of terrorism. However, ACPO wants to go further by permitting authorities to intervene and disrupt unlawful activity at an early stage. Attacks on web sites typically take the form of a denial-of-service attack, where computers send massive amounts of data to overwhelm the web server hosting the site. Ken Jones, Chairman of the ACPO Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, admits that such an initiative would require significant international cooperation. The only country that currently permits offensive hacking by law enforcement officials is Australia, and apparently it has not yet been used against foreign web servers. According to ACPO, encryption is slowing law-enforcement investigations, so the proposals would also make it illegal to fail to disclose an encryption password. This move was criticized by a civil liberties advocacy organization, Spy.org.uk: "Presumably what ACPO are trying to do it to remove the existing defence of "˜I have genuinely forgotten my PGP pass-phrase', which is simply unfair". For the full proposal of ACPO, see: http://www.4law.co.il/apco21705.htm For an article on News.com, see: http://makeashorterlink.com/?I2FC13A8B Summary by: Nyall Engfield