8 ms·

Activist arrested by London police after downloading docs found on Google search

198 points by BlackVanilla 5y ago

sxp 5y ago
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/police_raid_man_for_downloading_google_search_docs/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/police_raid_man_for_d... is a better article with pictures. The key bit is > The raid by four Metropolitan Police constables took place after Southwark campaigner Robert Hutchinson was reportedly accused of illegally entering a password-protected area of a website. > "I was searching in Google and found links to board meeting minutes," he told The Register. "Board reports, none of which were marked confidential. So I have no question that it was in the public domain." So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait when the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data.
- tpmx 5y ago
  No, the core issue is the London Metropolitan Police being incompetent (and slow).
  - gowld 5y ago
    Not just incompetent, but callous and cruel toward the citizenry, making themselves agents of capitalist oppression.
    - jdjdu 5y ago
      How? By investigating a report of a crime, determining it was false, and releasing the guy?
      - dheera 5y ago
        There is no reason to take the guy into custard for downloading a file, he didn't do anything violent, and should be allowed to stay home as long as he cooperates with the investigation. Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial.
        mellosouls 5y ago
        There is no reason to take the guy into custard for downloading a file He was definitely in a jam
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        jdjdu 5y ago
        >Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial. Uh, so if someone set fire to a bunch of homes in a neighborhood, and there's video of them doing it, but they did it knowing the homes were empty, they should just be left free until the trial is over? I'm sorry but I feel like a lot of online comments on criminal justice are very shortsighted
        unholythree 5y ago
        A quick google search indicates arson is considered a violent crime in the US even though it is a property crime. I assume because of the high potential of injury or death. I do however agree with you that there are some property or financial crimes in which arresting a suspect would be warranted, especially if they had incentive to flee or intimidate potential witnesses.
        dheera 5y ago
        Property crimes, yes, arrest. Financial crimes, no. Holding them hostage isn't useful or productive. As long as they are cooperative with investigation, let them be until a verdict is reached. It's too easy for governments to accuse people on a whim of financial "crimes" that aren't really crimes. That sets a very bad precedent for misuse of power. Next thing you know they'll be randomly arresting people from their bedroom for suspected tax evasion instead of auditing them. Not good for those who did follow the rules. There are real crimes, yes, but there is too much grey area and there is no danger to people or property to let financial crime suspects be at home.
        crimsoneer 5y ago
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        They charged him without any evidence. They were harrassing an activist. It wasn't incompetence. [Edit: the article didn't say they charged him; I was wrong] Well, that's how it looks to me, on the basis of a single report in a tech journal with a sort-of tabloid outlook. Maybe there will be more information in coming days.
        feu 5y ago
        >They charged him without any evidence. The article explicitly says that the police did not charge him.
        tssva 5y ago
        No where in the article does it say they charged him with anything.
        denton-scratch 5y ago
        I'm wrong - they didn't charge him. I don't know why I wrote that - I had read the article. But they did arrest him.
        crimsoneer 5y ago
        That's how the UK legal system works. An arrest is an investigative tool.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        > They charged him Eh?
        bmsleight_ 5y ago
        A British term, means formally charged with an offence. Police compile evidence and/or arrest a person. If the Police think there is enough of a case, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decide if there is enough evidence to support a 'charge' https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-whether-charge-individual-criminal-offence https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-w... Basically Police arrest, looked at the evidence then took no action as Police decided no crime - therefore not charged.
    - ryanlol 5y ago
      There’s no reason to blindly believe every report of crime. In this case there probably wasn’t sufficient evidence on the victim’s side that any crime had happened.
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, we'll change to that from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478. Thanks!
  - rexreed 5y ago
    A Title change might be good too, because like others, I thought it was Google Docs snitching on a downloader. A possibly more accurate title would be: "Activist raided by London police after downloading docs found on Google Search"
    - dang 5y ago
      Ah ok. Fixed. Thanks!
      - ChrisKnott 5y ago
        I would change "raided" to "arrested". The word "raid" is only used by El Reg and not any primary source. The account the arrestee gives in the BBC is "four police officers turn[ed] up at [my] door at 8:30" which suggests to me they just served him with a warrant and he let them in. Perhaps some people might call any execution of a warrant a "raid" but to me it suggests a forced entry.
        dang 5y ago
        Ok, we've done that. Thanks!
- capableweb 5y ago
  > So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait No, Hutchinson found the documents by searching on Google for the meeting minutes. The website might have protected the place where you found the link to the meeting minutes, but the meeting minutes themselves were hosted in a directory that not only was publicly accessible if you had the URL, but also allowed Google's crawler to access it and store it. There is a slippery slope here, either way (if he gets free or if he gets sentenced), but none the less, Google is relevant to the case.
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Google is super relevant to the case if they identified someone who downloaded a non-protected file in response to a police request. Not sure there is any slope left to slip on, this is basically the worst case scenario already I think. Edit: Whoops, all of my assumptions were wrong!
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      I beg to differ. I don't think Google is relevant. As far as I can see, Google provided a search-result, which eventually (after Google's batted it around internally a few times) turns into an HTTP request to the CBS website, which resulted in password-free access to a public document. So that will show up in the CBS webserver's access log; that's how they got the IP address. Nothing to do with Google. Getting from the IP address to the person is messier; websearches, requests to ISPs, and presumably searches of activist databases the cops no doubt maintain might all have played a part. My guess is the cops knew there was no case against him, because they tried the URL, and saw that there was no password challenge; but charged him anyway, because he was an activist, and they wanted to intimidate him.
      - ChrisKnott 5y ago
        He wasn't charged.
        denton-scratch 5y ago
- zoomablemind 5y ago
  > ... the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data. It seems that the bigger issue is that the activist was arrested by the police on supposedly only IP address evidence presented by the company/society. Somehow the IP had to be linked to the person, probably a warrant should be needed for that too.
  - throwthere 5y ago
    That's not a bigger issue because the police simply had a warrant for the person who shared the documents. The first sentence of the article is: > A man who viewed documents online for a controversial London property development and *shared them on social media* was raided by police after developers claimed there had been a break-in to their systems.
    - zoomablemind 5y ago
      Quoting from the article: "...Hutchinson said his identification by Leathermarket and subsequent arrest raised questions in his mind, saying police confirmed to him that the company had handed over an access log containing IP addresses: "Now, how that ended up with me being in the frame, I don't know. There's part of this that doesn't add up..." ..."
  - Maxburn 5y ago
    They didn't even have that much evidence, google didn't participate in finding the defendant. He shared these docs on social media and was found that way.
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  > So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait when the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data. The core issue is the government raided someones house for doing nothing wrong.
  - shellac 5y ago
    The police raided someone's house after a complaint. The government had nothing to do with this.
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      The government is entirely predicated on rule of law and the monopoly of violence imposed by police. Nice try though
- CodeWriter23 5y ago
  > So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait We're talking about The Register here. Clickbait is foundational to their business model.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  The law must have a different definition of "password protected area" if it can be accessed without entering a password. It's like the people who get tickets for speeding or for going through a red light while their car is parked, because their street-side parking in front of their house is in the field of view of the license plate reader. They're denying a tautology! A document is not password protected if you can access it without a password. A person not in a vehicle cannot commit a moving traffic violation. However, the automated computer system which issues those tickets does not actually comprehend those concepts, or any concepts at all. It merely follows rigid rules to send an alert on access to a particular file, or to issue a ticket with to the owner of the license plate number identified by the camera when a speed sensor returns a value not less than the speed limit (eg. NaN). But who is the "they" who are denying those tautologies? As we abstract more and more to automated systems, it's important to remember that these systems are as dumb as a brick. A brick connected to the Internet and with very complicated melted sand inside, but a brick nonetheless. When decisions recommended by these bricks have significant consequences, it's important to keep a human in the loop.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I don't think this is name dropping and obvious that it wasn't sufficiently protected. These cases seems trivial, but they are certainly governmental abuse. In a perfect world, there would be consequences. Not for the officers but for those requesting the raid.
Jsharm 5y ago
Is he entitled to any compensation?
- crimsoneer 5y ago
  Not really. They arrested him to investigate and let him go. It's not very nice, but it's lawful and working as intended
  - xnyan 5y ago
    The power of arrest has and is abused to punish and harass people. Perhaps I'm mistaken and in the UK those accused of unauthorized downloading are subject to arbitrary arrest, but this all seemed very abnormal. The police only investigate a fraction of the crimes reported to them, even when there's evidence or they they think they could get a conviction. If you called up the police, any police anywhere, right now and said "Officer arrest this man, he downloaded a pdf from my server and I have the log.txt file to prove it!", I would honestly be willing to wager the deed to my house that the police would not be banging my door at sunrise to forcibly take me away and interrogate me. At best it was gross incompetence, at worst abuse of power.
- rlpb 5y ago
  I'd like to think so, on the basis of negligence both from the police and from the accuser. The accuser, because they were negligent in 1) securing their files; and 2) making allegations against the victim without appropriate confirmation. The police, because they were negligent in that they did nothing to verify the allegation before taking some pretty drastic steps (arrest, device seizure) to the detriment of the victim. However, I'm not aware of any success in this area before. It'd be new legal ground. I'd like to think that there should be some bar of reasonableness in the handling of a "computer crime" where anything below does qualify as negligence - along the same lines as unlawful arrest for any other reason. However I don't think the courts have ever considered such a case. It's impossible to make any claim as to whether compensation is due or not because there's never been an appropriate test case that can be referred to.
_trampeltier 5y ago
If they checked, who did access the files, don't the police should have seen, there was no password protection? Very strange. And the police nedded al his devices for 4 weeks to check that ..
- dopamean 5y ago
  Presumably whoever called the cops turned the password protection on before doing so.
  - _trampeltier 5y ago
    But then they have lied to the police.
    - tristor 5y ago
      > But then they have lied to the police. Yes. Companies misuse the violence of the state for their own ends all the time (see: Union busting).
      - Wohlf 5y ago
        So do normal people, like reporting "suspicious activity" and SWATing.
        space_rock 5y ago
        It's almost like the state is too powerful and criminals best tool is abusing the states systems to leverage its violence
- crimsoneer 5y ago
  This job will have gone to some 20 year old PC. It's not CSI.
gowld 5y ago
This is why people say that the police are an agent of the wealthy to oppress the common people. The wealthy "file a report", and the police "take the report seriously", trampling the rights and stealing precious time of people's lives (and sometimes much worse), but the common people can not do the same to their oppressors.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Everyone involved was getting paid their salary/wage throughout this, except the victim.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Considering the amount of SWATing we've seen in the news, the police are an agent of anyone capable of dialing 911, not just the wealthy. Actually, one could argue the police are more likely to respond with greater exuberance when responding to a reported hostage situation in a mansion vs. trap house.
- woah 5y ago
  Except the man arrested in this case was opposed to social housing for low income residents. What the police did was obviously wrong, but it doesn't really fit your narrative.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's resaonable to sum up someone from a "Campaign to stop Leathermarket CBS building on the popular ballcourt, removing children's outdoor sports space and green spaces" as "opposed to social housing".
    - woah 5y ago
      He was opposed to them building social housing
- frzj 5y ago
  This is factually wrong. They are doing it based on the principles of equality and freedom. This is exactly what those terms mean. Your freedom is only limited if its execution limits the freedom of others. In this case he was free to browser the documents, but he was also impeding on the freedom of that corporation. Same with equality, it seems immoral when the rich always win. But morality is just a WAY OF DEALING with the contradictions of that are inherent to our economic system. People need to understand that freedom and equality can only be enforced by the state and people actually WANT the state to have the monopoly on the use of force. Separation of power and being democratic can be deduced from that too.
roflc0ptic 5y ago
This article leaves some really crucial parts of this timeline ambiguous. These things happened in some order: 1. Guy downloads stuff from website 2. Guy publishes stuff from website 3. Stuff becomes unavailable on the website 4. Website owners go to police, report “illegal access” 5. Police arrest guy Either the police arrested him, and the company declined to inform the police that these illegally accessed files has been free to access, thus actively misleading the police, or company did inform the police and the police acted heinously by arresting him anyways. Maybe there’s a third option here that I’m not seeing. Seems pretty wild, and likely to me that the org should be criminally liable here (not that I know the laws or if they would be criminally liable.)
- nonfamous 5y ago
  6. No charges were filed >> "He was taken into custody and later released under investigation. Following a review of all available evidence, it was determined no offences had been committed and no further action was taken."
- brundolf 5y ago
  > He was taken into custody and later released under investigation. Following a review of all available evidence, it was determined no offences had been committed and no further action was taken. Sounds like the first one
  - gpm 5y ago
    This could also be "he was taken into custody, someone with a few more brain cells than average searched his computer, looked at his browser history, concluded that case 2 was the case and let him go". I don't think we have enough information.
- jdjdu 5y ago
  If the website owner didn't think it was a big deal, why would they call police in the first place? Police are not just sitting and eagerly waiting for the ridiculous calls and complaints they receive. Most likely the website owner made the story sound like sort of theft occurred.
denton-scratch 5y ago
El Reg doesn't say in so many words that Hutchinson didn't know he was in a password-protected area (sorry, double-negative). I mean: I believe that if he knew the material he accessed was behind a password wall, and that the search-result had pierced it, then he would be in violation of the CMA. That is: I think the Act doesn't require any kind of "breaking in" to create an offense; you just have to believe you're not supposed to be there. IANAL.
- rlpb 5y ago
  The BBC article on this (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478) says: """ None of the documents had any marking to suggest that they were confidential, nor were they protected by a password, he says. He believed they were the type of material an organisation like Leathermarket CBS would and should publish. ... Mr Hutchinson saw no issue downloading what he regarded as public documents, but the CBS disagrees. """
lsllc 5y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28130002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28130002
cblconfederate 5y ago
Did they arrest GoogleBot as well?
Gunax 5y ago
You're thinking it's ridiculous, but this is exactly what happened to Weev. He found URLs that were not 'supposed' to be exposed, which apparently constitutes unauthorized access... You know like typing in a URL to the browser instead of clicking a link.

198 points by BlackVanilla 5y ago

sxp 5y ago

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/police_raid_man_for_downloading_google_search_docs/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/police_raid_man_for_d... is a better article with pictures. The key bit is > The raid by four Metropolitan Police constables took place after Southwark campaigner Robert Hutchinson was reportedly accused of illegally entering a password-protected area of a website. > "I was searching in Google and found links to board meeting minutes," he told The Register. "Board reports, none of which were marked confidential. So I have no question that it was in the public domain." So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait when the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data.

tpmx 5y ago
No, the core issue is the London Metropolitan Police being incompetent (and slow).
- gowld 5y ago
  Not just incompetent, but callous and cruel toward the citizenry, making themselves agents of capitalist oppression.
  - jdjdu 5y ago
    How? By investigating a report of a crime, determining it was false, and releasing the guy?
    - dheera 5y ago
      There is no reason to take the guy into custard for downloading a file, he didn't do anything violent, and should be allowed to stay home as long as he cooperates with the investigation. Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial.
      - mellosouls 5y ago
        There is no reason to take the guy into custard for downloading a file He was definitely in a jam
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - jdjdu 5y ago
        >Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial. Uh, so if someone set fire to a bunch of homes in a neighborhood, and there's video of them doing it, but they did it knowing the homes were empty, they should just be left free until the trial is over? I'm sorry but I feel like a lot of online comments on criminal justice are very shortsighted
        unholythree 5y ago
        A quick google search indicates arson is considered a violent crime in the US even though it is a property crime. I assume because of the high potential of injury or death. I do however agree with you that there are some property or financial crimes in which arresting a suspect would be warranted, especially if they had incentive to flee or intimidate potential witnesses.
        dheera 5y ago
        Property crimes, yes, arrest. Financial crimes, no. Holding them hostage isn't useful or productive. As long as they are cooperative with investigation, let them be until a verdict is reached. It's too easy for governments to accuse people on a whim of financial "crimes" that aren't really crimes. That sets a very bad precedent for misuse of power. Next thing you know they'll be randomly arresting people from their bedroom for suspected tax evasion instead of auditing them. Not good for those who did follow the rules. There are real crimes, yes, but there is too much grey area and there is no danger to people or property to let financial crime suspects be at home.
      - crimsoneer 5y ago
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      They charged him without any evidence. They were harrassing an activist. It wasn't incompetence. [Edit: the article didn't say they charged him; I was wrong] Well, that's how it looks to me, on the basis of a single report in a tech journal with a sort-of tabloid outlook. Maybe there will be more information in coming days.
      - feu 5y ago
        >They charged him without any evidence. The article explicitly says that the police did not charge him.
      - tssva 5y ago
        No where in the article does it say they charged him with anything.
        denton-scratch 5y ago
        I'm wrong - they didn't charge him. I don't know why I wrote that - I had read the article. But they did arrest him.
        crimsoneer 5y ago
        That's how the UK legal system works. An arrest is an investigative tool.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        > They charged him Eh?
        bmsleight_ 5y ago
        A British term, means formally charged with an offence. Police compile evidence and/or arrest a person. If the Police think there is enough of a case, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decide if there is enough evidence to support a 'charge' https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-whether-charge-individual-criminal-offence https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-w... Basically Police arrest, looked at the evidence then took no action as Police decided no crime - therefore not charged.
  - ryanlol 5y ago
    There’s no reason to blindly believe every report of crime. In this case there probably wasn’t sufficient evidence on the victim’s side that any crime had happened.
dang 5y ago
Ok, we'll change to that from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478. Thanks!
- rexreed 5y ago
  A Title change might be good too, because like others, I thought it was Google Docs snitching on a downloader. A possibly more accurate title would be: "Activist raided by London police after downloading docs found on Google Search"
  - dang 5y ago
    Ah ok. Fixed. Thanks!
    - ChrisKnott 5y ago
      I would change "raided" to "arrested". The word "raid" is only used by El Reg and not any primary source. The account the arrestee gives in the BBC is "four police officers turn[ed] up at [my] door at 8:30" which suggests to me they just served him with a warrant and he let them in. Perhaps some people might call any execution of a warrant a "raid" but to me it suggests a forced entry.
      - dang 5y ago
        Ok, we've done that. Thanks!
capableweb 5y ago
> So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait No, Hutchinson found the documents by searching on Google for the meeting minutes. The website might have protected the place where you found the link to the meeting minutes, but the meeting minutes themselves were hosted in a directory that not only was publicly accessible if you had the URL, but also allowed Google's crawler to access it and store it. There is a slippery slope here, either way (if he gets free or if he gets sentenced), but none the less, Google is relevant to the case.
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  Google is super relevant to the case if they identified someone who downloaded a non-protected file in response to a police request. Not sure there is any slope left to slip on, this is basically the worst case scenario already I think. Edit: Whoops, all of my assumptions were wrong!
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    I beg to differ. I don't think Google is relevant. As far as I can see, Google provided a search-result, which eventually (after Google's batted it around internally a few times) turns into an HTTP request to the CBS website, which resulted in password-free access to a public document. So that will show up in the CBS webserver's access log; that's how they got the IP address. Nothing to do with Google. Getting from the IP address to the person is messier; websearches, requests to ISPs, and presumably searches of activist databases the cops no doubt maintain might all have played a part. My guess is the cops knew there was no case against him, because they tried the URL, and saw that there was no password challenge; but charged him anyway, because he was an activist, and they wanted to intimidate him.
    - ChrisKnott 5y ago
      He wasn't charged.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
zoomablemind 5y ago
> ... the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data. It seems that the bigger issue is that the activist was arrested by the police on supposedly only IP address evidence presented by the company/society. Somehow the IP had to be linked to the person, probably a warrant should be needed for that too.
- throwthere 5y ago
  That's not a bigger issue because the police simply had a warrant for the person who shared the documents. The first sentence of the article is: > A man who viewed documents online for a controversial London property development and *shared them on social media* was raided by police after developers claimed there had been a break-in to their systems.
  - zoomablemind 5y ago
    Quoting from the article: "...Hutchinson said his identification by Leathermarket and subsequent arrest raised questions in his mind, saying police confirmed to him that the company had handed over an access log containing IP addresses: "Now, how that ended up with me being in the frame, I don't know. There's part of this that doesn't add up..." ..."
- Maxburn 5y ago
  They didn't even have that much evidence, google didn't participate in finding the defendant. He shared these docs on social media and was found that way.
calvinmorrison 5y ago
> So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait when the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data. The core issue is the government raided someones house for doing nothing wrong.
- shellac 5y ago
  The police raided someone's house after a complaint. The government had nothing to do with this.
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    The government is entirely predicated on rule of law and the monopoly of violence imposed by police. Nice try though
CodeWriter23 5y ago
> So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait We're talking about The Register here. Clickbait is foundational to their business model.
LeifCarrotson 5y ago
The law must have a different definition of "password protected area" if it can be accessed without entering a password. It's like the people who get tickets for speeding or for going through a red light while their car is parked, because their street-side parking in front of their house is in the field of view of the license plate reader. They're denying a tautology! A document is not password protected if you can access it without a password. A person not in a vehicle cannot commit a moving traffic violation. However, the automated computer system which issues those tickets does not actually comprehend those concepts, or any concepts at all. It merely follows rigid rules to send an alert on access to a particular file, or to issue a ticket with to the owner of the license plate number identified by the camera when a speed sensor returns a value not less than the speed limit (eg. NaN). But who is the "they" who are denying those tautologies? As we abstract more and more to automated systems, it's important to remember that these systems are as dumb as a brick. A brick connected to the Internet and with very complicated melted sand inside, but a brick nonetheless. When decisions recommended by these bricks have significant consequences, it's important to keep a human in the loop.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
raxxorrax 5y ago
I don't think this is name dropping and obvious that it wasn't sufficiently protected. These cases seems trivial, but they are certainly governmental abuse. In a perfect world, there would be consequences. Not for the officers but for those requesting the raid.

Jsharm 5y ago

Is he entitled to any compensation?

crimsoneer 5y ago
Not really. They arrested him to investigate and let him go. It's not very nice, but it's lawful and working as intended
- xnyan 5y ago
  The power of arrest has and is abused to punish and harass people. Perhaps I'm mistaken and in the UK those accused of unauthorized downloading are subject to arbitrary arrest, but this all seemed very abnormal. The police only investigate a fraction of the crimes reported to them, even when there's evidence or they they think they could get a conviction. If you called up the police, any police anywhere, right now and said "Officer arrest this man, he downloaded a pdf from my server and I have the log.txt file to prove it!", I would honestly be willing to wager the deed to my house that the police would not be banging my door at sunrise to forcibly take me away and interrogate me. At best it was gross incompetence, at worst abuse of power.
rlpb 5y ago
I'd like to think so, on the basis of negligence both from the police and from the accuser. The accuser, because they were negligent in 1) securing their files; and 2) making allegations against the victim without appropriate confirmation. The police, because they were negligent in that they did nothing to verify the allegation before taking some pretty drastic steps (arrest, device seizure) to the detriment of the victim. However, I'm not aware of any success in this area before. It'd be new legal ground. I'd like to think that there should be some bar of reasonableness in the handling of a "computer crime" where anything below does qualify as negligence - along the same lines as unlawful arrest for any other reason. However I don't think the courts have ever considered such a case. It's impossible to make any claim as to whether compensation is due or not because there's never been an appropriate test case that can be referred to.

_trampeltier 5y ago

If they checked, who did access the files, don't the police should have seen, there was no password protection? Very strange. And the police nedded al his devices for 4 weeks to check that ..

dopamean 5y ago
Presumably whoever called the cops turned the password protection on before doing so.
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  But then they have lied to the police.
  - tristor 5y ago
    > But then they have lied to the police. Yes. Companies misuse the violence of the state for their own ends all the time (see: Union busting).
    - Wohlf 5y ago
      So do normal people, like reporting "suspicious activity" and SWATing.
      - space_rock 5y ago
        It's almost like the state is too powerful and criminals best tool is abusing the states systems to leverage its violence
crimsoneer 5y ago
This job will have gone to some 20 year old PC. It's not CSI.

gowld 5y ago

This is why people say that the police are an agent of the wealthy to oppress the common people. The wealthy "file a report", and the police "take the report seriously", trampling the rights and stealing precious time of people's lives (and sometimes much worse), but the common people can not do the same to their oppressors.

Scoundreller 5y ago
Everyone involved was getting paid their salary/wage throughout this, except the victim.
pengaru 5y ago
Considering the amount of SWATing we've seen in the news, the police are an agent of anyone capable of dialing 911, not just the wealthy. Actually, one could argue the police are more likely to respond with greater exuberance when responding to a reported hostage situation in a mansion vs. trap house.
woah 5y ago
Except the man arrested in this case was opposed to social housing for low income residents. What the police did was obviously wrong, but it doesn't really fit your narrative.
- crtasm 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's resaonable to sum up someone from a "Campaign to stop Leathermarket CBS building on the popular ballcourt, removing children's outdoor sports space and green spaces" as "opposed to social housing".
  - woah 5y ago
    He was opposed to them building social housing
frzj 5y ago
This is factually wrong. They are doing it based on the principles of equality and freedom. This is exactly what those terms mean. Your freedom is only limited if its execution limits the freedom of others. In this case he was free to browser the documents, but he was also impeding on the freedom of that corporation. Same with equality, it seems immoral when the rich always win. But morality is just a WAY OF DEALING with the contradictions of that are inherent to our economic system. People need to understand that freedom and equality can only be enforced by the state and people actually WANT the state to have the monopoly on the use of force. Separation of power and being democratic can be deduced from that too.

roflc0ptic 5y ago

This article leaves some really crucial parts of this timeline ambiguous. These things happened in some order: 1. Guy downloads stuff from website 2. Guy publishes stuff from website 3. Stuff becomes unavailable on the website 4. Website owners go to police, report “illegal access” 5. Police arrest guy Either the police arrested him, and the company declined to inform the police that these illegally accessed files has been free to access, thus actively misleading the police, or company did inform the police and the police acted heinously by arresting him anyways. Maybe there’s a third option here that I’m not seeing. Seems pretty wild, and likely to me that the org should be criminally liable here (not that I know the laws or if they would be criminally liable.)

nonfamous 5y ago
6. No charges were filed >> "He was taken into custody and later released under investigation. Following a review of all available evidence, it was determined no offences had been committed and no further action was taken."
brundolf 5y ago
> He was taken into custody and later released under investigation. Following a review of all available evidence, it was determined no offences had been committed and no further action was taken. Sounds like the first one
- gpm 5y ago
  This could also be "he was taken into custody, someone with a few more brain cells than average searched his computer, looked at his browser history, concluded that case 2 was the case and let him go". I don't think we have enough information.
jdjdu 5y ago
If the website owner didn't think it was a big deal, why would they call police in the first place? Police are not just sitting and eagerly waiting for the ridiculous calls and complaints they receive. Most likely the website owner made the story sound like sort of theft occurred.

denton-scratch 5y ago

El Reg doesn't say in so many words that Hutchinson didn't know he was in a password-protected area (sorry, double-negative). I mean: I believe that if he knew the material he accessed was behind a password wall, and that the search-result had pierced it, then he would be in violation of the CMA. That is: I think the Act doesn't require any kind of "breaking in" to create an offense; you just have to believe you're not supposed to be there. IANAL.

rlpb 5y ago
The BBC article on this (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478) says: """ None of the documents had any marking to suggest that they were confidential, nor were they protected by a password, he says. He believed they were the type of material an organisation like Leathermarket CBS would and should publish. ... Mr Hutchinson saw no issue downloading what he regarded as public documents, but the CBS disagrees. """

lsllc 5y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28130002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28130002

cblconfederate 5y ago

Did they arrest GoogleBot as well?

Gunax 5y ago

You're thinking it's ridiculous, but this is exactly what happened to Weev. He found URLs that were not 'supposed' to be exposed, which apparently constitutes unauthorized access... You know like typing in a URL to the browser instead of clicking a link.