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Police Want Access to Web Users' Personal Docs

by Amar Toor on February 5, 2010 at 08:30 AM

As part of an overarching movement to overhaul the legal protocol that dictates online investigations, police forces are now pushing for the creation of a new national law enforcement Web interface. The hope is to streamline the procedure by which police can seize personal data of suspected cyber criminals. The proposed system would provide police with a direct link to e-mail and Internet providers, and, if implemented, would theoretically save them the hassle of faxing search warrants and other paperwork to providers before digging through a suspect's cyber data. In a survey to be presented at a federal task force meeting today, 61-percent of officers said they'd had an investigation that was botched "because data was not retained," and only 40-percent said they were satisfied with Internet providers' response time.

The proposed interface, however, is not without controversy. Following the recent revelations that the FBI had been illegally stockpiling personal phone records for the past few years, many are understandably wary of ceding too much investigative autonomy to officials. As Hemu Nigam, chief security officer at MySpace, says, "You can be very supportive of law enforcement investigations and at the same time be very cognizant and supportive of the privacy rights of our users." According to CNET, there's also a significant security risk endemic to any large network; if a single user is infected with malware, it could have a ripple effect on the entire interface, and potentially leak confidential data.

While it's a bit silly that police should still have to rely on faxed warrants and company callbacks to pursue investigations, we also totally understand the fears expressed by privacy advocates, or anyone else jaded by the government's ethically questionable data collection practices. Besides, doesn't putting all of our cyber data eggs in one basket make for an easy target for (ironically) cybercriminals? If they're going to go through with something this ambitious, police should definitely tread carefully, and remember that highly confidential investigative data, much like nuclear waste, can wreak havoc when leaked. [From: CNET News]

Tags: crime, cybercrime, law enforcement, LawEnforcement, police, privacy, top

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