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This is the un-edited version of an article sent in by Diana Quaver, which we published earlier in a reduced form. Diana has been closely following this story, which should be of great interest to the on-line community:
I have recently followed the trial of Daniel Cuthbert. This was the gentleman who was accused of “hacking” into the website of the Disasters and Emergency Committee. He was recently found “regretfully” found guilty under section 1 (a) of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. He never even lived in Whitechapel. This was the BBC story a few months ago:
Charge over tsunami ‘hacking’ bid
A man has been charged over an alleged attempt to hack into a website set up to raise funds after the Asian tsunami.
Daniel Cuthbert, 28, of Whitechapel, east London, has been charged with one offence under the Computer Misuse Act.
Scotland Yard said the charge followed an alleged unauthorised access of the Disasters and Emergency Committee site on New Year’s Eve.
Mr Cuthbert is due to appear at Horseferry Magistrates’ Court next Thursday.
The disaster fund has raised an estimated £250m to help victims of the tsunami.
Tens of thousands of people used its web pages to offer money to those caught in the Boxing Day tragedy.
Today, Daniel Cuthbert was found guilty.
Daniel Cuthbert saw the devastating images of the Tsunami disaster and decided to donate £30 via the website that was hastily set up to be able to process payments. He is a computer security consultant, regarded in his field as an expert and respected by colleagues and employers alike. He entered his full personal details (home address, number, name and full card details). He did not receive confirmation of payment or a reference and became concerned as he has had issues with fraud on his card on a previous occasion. He then did a couple of very basic penetration tests. If they resulted in the site being insecure as he suspected, he would have contacted the authorities, as he had nothing to gain from doing this for fun and keeping the fact to himself that he suspected the site to be a phishing site and all this money pledged was going to some South American somewhere in South America.
The first test he used was the (dot dot slash, 3 times) ../../../ sequence. The ../ command is called a Directory Traversal which allows you to move up the hierarchy of a file. The triple sequence amounts to a DTA (Directory Traversal Attack), allows you to move three times. It is not a complete attack as that would require a further command, it was merely a light “knock on the door”. The other test, which constituted an apostrophe( ‘ ) was also used. He was then satisfied that the site was safe as his received no error messages in response to his query, then went about his work duties. There were no warnings or dialogue boxes showing that he had accessed an unauthorised area.
20 days later he was arrested at his place of work and had his house searched. In the first part of his interview, he did not readily acknowledge his actions, but in the second half of the interview, he did. He was a little distraught and confused upon arrest, as anyone would be in that situation and did not ask for a solicitor, as he maintained he did nothing wrong. His tests were done in a 2 minute timeframe, then forgotten about.
He was prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, which was signed in 1989 when perms were just going out of fashion and mobile phones were like bricks and cost £1000 and we were still using green type on a black background. The word “ Computer” was not even defined as they realised that this area was moving at light speed so they wanted to keep it open. Sadly, it has become open to willy-nilly interpretation and the magistrate decided there was intention to access data as stated in section 1(a), although I may be biased, it is an incorrect interpretation.
Cuthbert was prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, and convicted under Section 1 (a) of this Act. The relevant section of the Act is:
Section (1) of the Act states:
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if –
a. he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
b. the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
c. he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
As an expert, if he had true intent (as the judge deemed he did, which is an incorrect analysis) he would have been more than capable of “hacking” and gunning that door down with a digital version of a point-blank range AK47, but he did not. He maybe should not have done the tests that are beyond the knowledge of a regular user and a caution would have sufficed, there was no need for a trial and certainly not 10 months of waiting time. The policeman was smug as he got his browny points and the CPS prosecutor was what one can expect of a CPS prosecutor, patronising, pedantic and uninteresting but sadly successful.
The ../ sequence triggered of the alarm which was set up as “high” for this sort of “attack” at the donate.bt.com website that was set up by the DEC website. This alerted someone that there was something potentially suspicious, this was then passed up to someone who reported it to the police. They found their suspect through the IP address and were able to trace it to his laptop. Well, the Computer Crime Unit (known in the industry as “Muppets”) were very happy they got their man.
Mr Cuthbert was convicted under S. 1 (a) of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. It will be almost impossible for him to work in IT, the security industry being totally based on trust and reputation, as they are all freelancers and rely on contacts. That simply is not right. Justice is not always synonymous with legality.
When someone tells you, “whatever you do, do not press the red button” and you are almost compelled, in just that way, I am feverishly tempted to type in the ../../../ sequence in the Ministry of Defence website, and see what happens. Maybe not.
Perhaps you think I am talking about Venezuela under the thuggish Chavez?
Nope. I am talking about Britain.
Tony Blair gave his annual Labour Party conference speech to the party faithful (and not-so-faithful) in Brighton this afternoon. He touched on a variety of issues but this series of quotes stands out and reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that this is one of the most illiberal governments since the Second World War:
We are trying to fight 21st century crime – ASB (anti-social behaviour) drug-dealing, binge-drinking, organised crime – with 19th century methods, as if we still lived in the time of Dickens. The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted. Don’t misunderstand me. That must be the duty of any criminal justice system. But surely our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety.
It means a complete change of thinking. It doesn’t mean abandoning human rights. It means deciding whose come first.
The emphasis is unmistakeable, however much Blair tries to soften the authortarian message with assurances about defending the rights of accused persons. Under this government, the traditional checks and balances of the Common Law, already eroded by the previous Tory government, have decayed at an accelerating pace. The right to trial by jury, habeas corpus, double-jepoardy, admissability of previous conviction details… the list of protections that have been wiped out or been eroded gets longer and longer.
Blair, being the crafty sonafabitch he is, understands how easy it is to portray we defenders of civil liberties as “soft on crime”, and so the point to stress must be to challenge the false choice he offers: be liberal or be safe.
Far from making us safer, playing fast and loose with the Common Law protections of the individual are having the opposite effect in the medium and long run. Weakening the right to self defence emboldens burglars. And dismantling traditional legal safeguards will undermine respect for the rule of law among the otherwise law-abiding, to no good effect. And yet when people are convicted of serious crimes like rape and burglary, the offenders often regain their liberty after a relatively brief period in jail, making no restitution to their victims.
Blair, and for that matter the Tories, have still not grasped the fact that it can and should be possible to crack down hard on crime while protecting our ancient liberties. Or is that too subtle for for our political classes to grasp? Is there some great nugget of wisdom in the Blair speech that I missed?
Those so inclined to read Blair’s speech in full can go here.
Via Daniel W. Drezner, I read this story about the new rules that China has established to regulate news reporting on the Internet.
“The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest,” the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately.
The news agency did not detail the rules, but said Internet news sites must “be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests.”
That is a nice touch in the way they do not define what is against ‘national security and public interest’. In effect, it is whatever the Chinese Communist Party says it is.
The Chinese government is also getting quite adept at regulating Internet content in its own country, not least through help from US Internet and software companies. Dave Kopel writes that these companies might well have broken the law in selling this technology to the Chinese government, but the current administration refuses to apply it, and thinks that only pressure from consumers and shareholders will cause these companies to mend their ways.
Foreign companies that invest or do a lot of business with China are going to have more and more ethical headaches of this nature in the years ahead.
What does this, have in common with this,
and this?
What’s different is also interesting. The police being used as as an instrument to suppress peaceful political dissent is one thing, but their doing it on their own initiative is if anything more worrying.
Respect for property rights in America seems to be at a new low these last few years. Just a few months ago we heard the Supreme Court announce that any government can apply Eminent Domain to steal pretty much anything it wants.
Now we have the Federal Government using a technology for ‘secret’ purposes and making sure the inventors cannot sue for fair recompense.
I do not know about you, but I do not find it surprising enough to warrant high secrecy that the US government is using submarines to tap undersea cables. They have been doing this for decades, albiet with copper. They even had a special submarine for it, the USS Halibut.
I can understand sensitivity to which cables and what data… but to pretend that we do not already know what they are doing is much like the 3 year old with a cake smeared face confronted with the empty cake plate proclaiming: “I didn’t do it!”
The Home Secretary today announced yet another package of “anti-terrorism” police-state measures.
Maybe it’s just me, but don’t they appear to come out more frequently and be bolder each time? The pace is stiffening, which is weird since the rhetoric is always of “striking a balance”. Surely, if a balance really was being sought, we would expect successive adjustments to be smaller and smaller?
The most interesting and alarming are the “powers to tackle extremist bookshops”. The proposed new offence is “the publishing or possessing for sale of publications that indirectly incite terrorist acts”. Better run down to Waterstones or Borders and pick up those copies of The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Fountainhead, Long Walk to Freedom, and Mein Kampf now, before they are shut down.
Make no mistake, the Blair régime now proposes to make many, many polemical and political books illegal. Or potentially illegal. For “indirect incitement” is a novel, but plainly very inchoate, inchoate offense, and the definition of “terrorism” we may expect to be used is that of the Terrorism Act 2000:
(1) In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where—
(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it—
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.
(4) In this section—
(a) “action” includes action outside the United Kingdom,
(b) a reference to any person or to property is a reference to any person, or to property, wherever situated,
(c) a reference to the public includes a reference to the public of a country other than the United Kingdom, and
(d) “the government” means the government of the United Kingdom, of a Part of the United Kingdom or of a country other than the United Kingdom.
(5) In this Act a reference to action taken for the purposes of terrorism includes a reference to action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organisation.
Potentially, is the rub. I doubt any of the works I mentioned will be banned this decade. But almost every strongly expressed political, religious or ideological opinion will be illegal, if the authorities so choose.
Arbitrary power by democratic mandate. Lawlessness backed by law. Once more Lenin would be proud.
I’ve already pointed out what the Home Office’s ambitions could mean for this site. Locking people up and deporting them for openly expressed opinions is easy. But the freedom of the press in other parts of the world presents a problem: are they going to search every book package from Amazon.com for works from the proscribed list?
The government’s plans to impose ID cards on British people get wobblier by the day and at last they seem to realise that there is no point in pretending otherwise. Nevertheless, it is important for everyone to remember who cast their votes in Parliament and thereby allowed us to get this close to a civil liberties calamity in the first place. We are by no means in the clear yet but it does seem that things are going our way to some extent and so it is important to kick and stamp on this beast hard whilst it is down.
If we are to avoid this issue coming back to haunt us again and again, we need to make sure that forgiveness is left for the afterlife and use the voting record to MPs who voted in favour at any time to question their fundamental morality and trustworthiness, regardless of party. It is essential not just now but in the foreseeable future to make this issue as fraught and unpleasant as possible for all concerned. If we can make ‘the ID cards issue’ synonymous with political calamity, methinks politicos might just avoid the issue in favour of lower hanging fruit.
I implied here that I would let Samizdata readers know when a new, more inclusive 😉 anti-ID-card pledge was up and running. It is now.
We are lucky to have the charming former stand-up Franky Ma as the pledge leader. As the covers of more consumer magazines, in more countries, than it is comfortable to imagine attest, you cannot go far wrong associating an attractive young woman with your product.
You can give your word to support the nearly 11,000 ID refuseniks here and you can support NO2ID itself, as ever, here.
Washington DC’s Heritage Foundation has sent out a remarkably stupid e-mail today telling us how to deal with terrorism:
the British government must strengthen its anti-terror laws, from suspect detention to intelligence.
It is bad enough having Charles Clarke fighting against civil liberties in Britain without having the American Right poking its nose into our affairs. I am reminded of the words Charles Fox who in 1794, when warning against the suspension of Habeus Corpus, wrote:
The bill was characteristic of those violent times when, instead of being guided by reason, we were to be put under the dominion of wild passion, and when our pretended alarms were to be made the pretexts for destroying the first principles of the very system which we affected to revere.
We do not need right-wing opportunists from America campaigning against our civil liberties. Someone, please tell them to put a sock in it.
I cannot claim to have been brave very much in my life. And I do not know that I am being brave now. But I do know that I am now committed along with more than 10,000 others to refuse to register with the National Identity Register, whatever the Government may now choose to do to me.
The first NO2ID “Refuse” pledge through the MySociety PledgeBank site has been successful. 10,000, and counting, British people value freedom enough that they are prepared to become an un-person, rather than submit to lifelong supervision under the fallaciously named “ID card” system that the Government hopes to introduce. In four weeks we have raised promises of £100,000 for legal defence. And people are still joining in.
In a few days we will launch a bigger pledge, a million-pound-plus fighting fund, for everyone to subscribe to who supports the refuseniks, but cannot (because they have dependents or professional obligations) join in the identity strike. We need 50,000 people willing to pledge £20 if the bill passes. Look out for it.
And to the American readers of this blog I say: Help us now. If we go down, you are next…
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.
My life is my own.”
Fine editorial in the Sunday Telegraph here pointing out that the proposed law designed to regulate comments about religion (conceived cynically by NuLab to buy votes in Muslim-dominated electoral districts) will actually make it harder for the authorities to crack down on radical mullahs intent on brainwashing impressionable young minds.
The law of unintended consequences in work again. I have come to the conclusion that this law should be taught in school, like Newton’s laws of gravity.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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