Drowning in data
The Register discusses the recent report from the Home Affairs Committee into the issue of the police holding prisoners without charge. Historically, the police had only a few days in which to decide to charge someone or release them. In 2004, they were given up to 14 days and, in 2005, 28 days for suspects of terrorism. Various police representatives and the UK Government want to extend that still further to 90 days – in the face of opposition from various police representatives, UK Intelligence chiefs and others. After being held to 28 days last year, the Government are trying again.
A Home Affairs Committee report into police detention powers, published earlier this week, concludes that police powers to hold terror suspects without charge will need to be extended from 28 days to 90 days – and, once the flimsier justifications (e.g. time needed for prayers) have been stripped out, technology is largely to blame…
[First,] a swift reality check of the current situation vis a vis terror investigations. Despite an extremely messy Parliamentary argument (one of several) last Autumn which resulted in police detention powers being extended from 14 days to 28 days, the Home Office has yet to switch the 28 days on, and the world has not yet ended…Home Office figures published in the report also do not indicate a pressing need for lengthy periods of pre-trial detention, with the vast majority of arrests being dealt with within the previous period of seven days (it was extended to 14 in January 2004), and only 11 people in total held for as long as 13-14 days during 2004-5…
The core calculation is essentially the one put forward by the police and accepted by the Government – technology has been an enabler for international terrorism, with email, the Internet and mobile telephony producing wide, diffuse, international networks. The data on hard drives and mobile phones needs to be examined, contacts need to be investigated and their data examined, and in the case of an incident, vast amounts of CCTV records need to be gone through…
All of which is, as far as it goes, logical. But take it a little further and the inherent futility of the route becomes apparent – ultimately, probably quite soon, the volume of data overwhelms the investigators and infinite time is needed to analyse all of it…
Another gotcha arises as and when encryption is widely used. If it’s poor and badly set up, then it’s easy to crack and you don’t need the key. If it’s properly set up, as Professor Ross Anderson put it to the Committee you either guess the password or give up.
pax et bonum
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