British plan allows police to hack into home PCs-without warrants.

Privacy and civil liberties groups who lament the erosion of privacy rights in this country might want to pay heed to what's happening across the pond in the United Kingdom.

According to several media reports out of the country the British Home Office has approved a plan that allows for an expansion of warrantless searches of people's home computers by police and M15 intelligence agents. Under the plan, law enforcement agents can basically hack into anybody's personal computer without any need for prior approval and covertly search through the contents of its hard drive including e-mails and Web browsing history. Well, so much for all those quaint notions about personal privacy.

Apparently, all that is needed apparently for a police officer to initiate such a search is a go-ahead from a chief constable. Seriously. According to a story in The Sunday Times,"a remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he 'believes' that it is 'proportionate' and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime" which is defined as any offence that is likely to attract a jail term of more than three years. There's just so much wrong with that approach it's hard to know where to even begin.

The Home Office's move apparently follows a decision by the European Union's council of ministers in Brussels to expand the implementation of a statute permitting the warrantless surveillance of private property. The plan allows police officers across the EU to ask their British counterparts to initiate a search of a British subject's personal computer. Presumably British law enforcement will have the same privilege though none of the articles I read made that clear.

As if all this isn't scary enough, what's really remarkable about the Home Office's move (at least according to the media reports) is the fact that none of this activity is controlled by any legislation or judicial oversight, at least for the moment. According to the Times article, British police say that such searches have already been going on in limited fashion for sometime now and are vital to stopping pedophiles, ID thieves and terrorists.

Maybe they are right and these searches are helpful. But the impunity with which such warrantless searches can be conducted and the apparent lack of oversight over them is what makes the whole notion so troubling, to say the least. The British are already among the world's most spied upon people thanks to their own government. Perhaps they have so gotten used to the notion of Big Brother that they have become blasé about the whole thing. Perhaps that's why there hasn't been more protest.