4 ms·

Lol, yes, I could do any of those things if I chose to do so.. Should ssh be illegal? Or shall we stick with the principal that "commiting crimes" is illegal, n

by jascii 7y ago

Lol, yes, I could do any of those things if I chose to do so.. Should ssh be illegal? Or shall we stick with the principal that "commiting crimes" is illegal, not "producing tools that can be used to commit a crime"? For what it's worth: "methods to disable the camera LED" was not a feature, that functionality was provided by an external plugin.

dylz 7y ago
I would imagine it didn't help their case that the author of the tool happily endorsed this external plugin?
Quarrelsome 7y ago
what if pretty much ALL your customers are criminals? That near enough the line for you yet? The moment you add that requested feature to disable the recording light on the camera of the targeted laptop. is that over the line yet? How about if your customers request a function that encrypts the root C:\ and puts up a message with a linked bitcoin address? We still on plausible deniability?
- jascii 7y ago
  Please stop the "what if's". They are speculation and have no relevance to the available information about this case. For me personally, the line of what constitutes ethical behaviour has been long passed by the authors of this tool. That is however completely irrelevant, the question is whether they acted illegally. I have a hard time seeing that based on the information available in the media.
PeterisP 7y ago
There's no currently active principle that "commiting crimes is illegal, not producing tools that can be used to commit a crime" so we can't stick to it - it's well established in many countries for many years now (the particular UK act is from 1990, so 29 years ago) that in certain conditions producing tools that can be used to commit a crime is a crime by itself. Of course, that doesn't apply to all circumstances and all tools that might be possibly used to commit crime, and it's a valid discussion topic on where exactly the line should be drawn; but that line between crime and not-a-crime definitely has some "I'm just producing tools" people on the crime side of it, not only morally but also legally, and not in some indeterminate future, but for as long as some of these "tool producers" have been alive.
- jascii 7y ago
  Interesting! Just for my further education, could you quote the name of the act in question? I assume there have been a few past that year.
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    For UK, it's the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3A http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3A with things like, among other things, "A person is guilty of an offence if he supplies or offers to supply any article believing that it is likely to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under [section 1, 3 or 3ZA]." and "(4)In this section “article” includes any program or data held in electronic form." so it is quite explicitly about tool making - with the quoted criteria about the belief/intent separating whether it's a crime or not. Though it seems that I made a mistake about the age of that law - it seems that this particular section of the "1990" law was actually inserted in 2006 with the amendments introduced by the Police and Justice Act 2006 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/48/section/37 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/48/section/37 so it's old but not that old.

by jascii 7y ago

dylz 7y ago

I would imagine it didn't help their case that the author of the tool happily endorsed this external plugin?

Quarrelsome 7y ago

what if pretty much ALL your customers are criminals? That near enough the line for you yet? The moment you add that requested feature to disable the recording light on the camera of the targeted laptop. is that over the line yet? How about if your customers request a function that encrypts the root C:\ and puts up a message with a linked bitcoin address? We still on plausible deniability?

jascii 7y ago
Please stop the "what if's". They are speculation and have no relevance to the available information about this case. For me personally, the line of what constitutes ethical behaviour has been long passed by the authors of this tool. That is however completely irrelevant, the question is whether they acted illegally. I have a hard time seeing that based on the information available in the media.

PeterisP 7y ago

There's no currently active principle that "commiting crimes is illegal, not producing tools that can be used to commit a crime" so we can't stick to it - it's well established in many countries for many years now (the particular UK act is from 1990, so 29 years ago) that in certain conditions producing tools that can be used to commit a crime is a crime by itself. Of course, that doesn't apply to all circumstances and all tools that might be possibly used to commit crime, and it's a valid discussion topic on where exactly the line should be drawn; but that line between crime and not-a-crime definitely has some "I'm just producing tools" people on the crime side of it, not only morally but also legally, and not in some indeterminate future, but for as long as some of these "tool producers" have been alive.

jascii 7y ago
Interesting! Just for my further education, could you quote the name of the act in question? I assume there have been a few past that year.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  For UK, it's the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3A http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/3A with things like, among other things, "A person is guilty of an offence if he supplies or offers to supply any article believing that it is likely to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under [section 1, 3 or 3ZA]." and "(4)In this section “article” includes any program or data held in electronic form." so it is quite explicitly about tool making - with the quoted criteria about the belief/intent separating whether it's a crime or not. Though it seems that I made a mistake about the age of that law - it seems that this particular section of the "1990" law was actually inserted in 2006 with the amendments introduced by the Police and Justice Act 2006 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/48/section/37 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/48/section/37 so it's old but not that old.