Could be the title of a silly Hollywood comedy, right?
Well, the technology-savvy criminals in Australia shouldn’t be laughing. The Australian government has passed a law allowing law enforcement agencies to, in effect, plant spyware in the computers of suspected criminals.
The use of key-loggers (software which tracks each keystroke typed on the computer’s keyboard and sends the results to a remote location without the knowledge of the typist) and tracking software (monitors site locations visited on that computer also reporting to a remote location) has been approved as a means of monitoring the communications of suspected criminals. This is intended to help law enforcement since many criminals have taken advantage of encryption techniques when sending data. The key-loggers and tracking software would actually “see” the data prior to the encryption step. Naturally, the Australian criminals have two things on their side: knowledge that this can be done and improved spyware tools. |
