[Gllug] Editors

Kieran Barry kieran at esperi.demon.co.uk
Tue Jul 31 00:09:10 UTC 2001


On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Tom Gilbert wrote:

> * David Freeman (freemadi at yahoo.co.uk) wrote:
> >  --- Tom Gilbert <tom at linuxbrit.co.uk> wrote: > * William Palfreman
> > (william at palfreman.com) wrote:
> > > > so people can be forced to incriminate themselves (or go to jail)
> > > 
> > > I'm sorry, but this is such a bullshit sentence.
> > > 
> > > Either you are forced to reveal you have broken the law (i.e you have
> > > indulged in an illegal activity) or you show that you aren't hiding
> > > anything illegal.
> > 
> > This is also BS, what happened to the right to remain silent? what
> > about the right outlined in the Human rights act to not incriminate
> > your self?
> 
> The right to remain silent is so that you cannot be cooerced into false
> testimony. You cannot be forced to have kiddy porn on your hard drive
> (for example).
> 
The right to silence grew out of the huge disparity between the
resources of the police and prosecution on one hand, and the 
defence on the other. (Note the past tense: it's gone.)

> > > There's nothing wrong (IMO) with criminals being forced to
> > > incriminate
> > > themselves, and by definition innocent people can't incriminate
> > > themselves because they haven't done anything wrong.
> > 
> > Its all about the right to remain silent and innocent till proven
> > guilty!
> >  
> > > It's all very well saying "but the government could frame you", but
> > > that's just paranoia and conspiracy theorism.
> > 
> > is it now? what happens if there is a good chance you will nock the
> > government out of office? surely they can use the law enforcement
> > forces to get all your encrypted data, not as far fetched as you may
> > thing. Just think back to the 30's in a country not that far away!
> 
> Conspiracy theories. Boring.

You are so naive, it's amazing.

Read up on the Birmingham Six. Read about the "appalling vista"
judgement by Denning. (The suspects were covered in bruises. Prison
officers were charged with assault. They were acquited. This meant that
the convicted "murderers" must have been assaulted by the police. When
proceedings got to Denning, Master of the Rolls, head of the appeal
court, he said that it was so embarassing, he wouldn't allow the case to
be heard. 15 or so years later, he said they should have been hanged to
avoid the hassle. Forensic tests proved that the "confessions" were not
records of interviews, but composed out of order by the police.)

Read up on any of the other miscarriages of justice. The ones that got
freed (and there were many) all happened because it was proven that the
police lied in the witness box.

Now, list for me the police charged with perjury.

Actually, far more interesting, most of these cases clearly involve
conspiracy of pervert the course of justice.

The right to privacy, to avoid self-incrimination and the burden of
proof are based on the absolutely clear grounds that the state has huge
powers which could be abused. Suppose one of your users has kiddie porn
on his account. He leaves, and you delete everything, but retain old
backup tapes. Most people would agree that in this case, although you
have possession which constitutes an offence, no harm is done, no
intention is present, and the case shouldn't be pursued.

What happens if a police officer comes in following a laptop theft. In 
the lift, you make a joke that he thinks takes the piss. He
asks you to examine all files on all backups. (This is unreasonable, but
in the context of the police suggesting that everyone make 7 years'
logs available, not impossible.) Kiddie Porn is found in /usr/local. Is
this what you want?

Have you or any of your friends ever bought illegal drugs? If you have
nothing to hide, please make available details of every financial
transaction over UKP1 in value for the last ten years.

Do you have any pirate software on your boxes? BSA need to audit you.
And they'd like to install daemons (which are probably insecure) to 
log which files are copied to your hard disk.

Remember, anyone who objects must have something to hide...

If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear...

Regards

Kieran



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