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Aussie coppers fear Windows 7 |
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Written by Nick Farrell
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Thursday, 22 October 2009 10:52 |
Great for convicts
A colony formerly populated by convicts, Australia is a
little worried about about the use of Windows 7 among the criminal
fraternity.
Queensland coppers fear criminals will use high-tech
encryption software on Microsoft's new Windows 7 to hide porn and files deep
within computer networks. Detective Superintendent Brian Hay from Queensland's
Fraud and Corporate Crime Group is has told AP that he is worried that the
new operating system will hamper police efforts to uncover criminal
evidence.
Recently Gold Coast police failed to break the encryption
on a peeping Tom's computer files which they fear might have lead
Surfers Paradise man Rohan Wyllie, 39, to get a stiffer penalty than the
one he ended up with. Wyllie admitted to spying on his flatmates through a
network of peepholes and cameras wired throughout his apartment
however he refused to hand over the encryption code on his home computer and
coppers could not view the illegal footage.
Windows 7 has more encryption functions in it and can
lock hard drives or portable flash drive files, allowing them to be
accessed only by using encryption codes similar to those used in online
banking. Microsoft confirms that the new encryption technology is
pretty much unbreakable but disputes claims that criminals would
successfully use the programs to lock out police and other law-enforcement
agencies.
Stuart Strathdee, the chief security adviser to Microsoft
Australia pointed out that in most jurisdictions failure to
disclose passwords, encryption keys and that sort of thing is also an offence
and there's not many people who will turn around and won't disclose
that sort of thing for fear of facing further charges. Few criminals had successfully withheld their passwords
and encryption keys from coppers.
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