It isn't that smart criminals don't exist. Rather, smart criminals don't fit our mental image of "criminals", which makes it harder to target laws against it.
[1]: http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-for...
I would argue that it has nothing to do with the laws; they're breaking the same laws as everybody else. It's that our justice system, at least in the US, incentivizes law enforcement to focus on easier prey. Smart criminals will probably defend themselves in court and be more likely to be privy to the tricks that police use. It's much easier for them to just arrest a poor person and threaten to throw them in jail for months behind bail that they can't afford unless they plead guilty to something they obviously didn't do. Most poor people will just take the plea, because they can't afford to miss work and lose their job while they wait for their day in court. NYPD in particular are notorious for this.
Maybe. But your data could well be flawed. You've only got to watch any of these police shows on TV, and you'll see them pick up a drug dealer because he's driving a car with no insurance, or not wearing a seatbelt, or any number of other minor transgressions. I saw one the other day where a guy yelled obscenities at the officers as he drove past, which caught their attention and caused them to recognise that he was a banned driver. That's just a special kind of stupid.
If these are the guys getting caught, then the most obvious way to not get caught is to dress smartly, drive an insured and roadworthy car at a sensible speed, and generally blend in to the thousands of commuters that take to the road every day.
Equally, while the dumb criminals will look at the new bill and not be too concerned because they don't plan that far ahead, the smart ones have already been using VPNs for years. The really smart ones aren't even using commercial VPN providers - they're using offshore VPS services with a prepaid VISA, and a script to set up OpenVPN in a couple of seconds, so they can rotate providers and destroy the VPS every couple of months or so.
TV isn't a good representation of most of it - it rarely shows how little profit drug dealers actually clear, for example.
This is an odd comment. Clearly the mechanism you describe is correct, but there's literally nothing accidental about it at all. The entire stated purpose of the criminal justice system is to create a set of incentives sufficient to ensure this calculus applies.
A friend of mine is a policeman, and says exactly that. MOST criminals have a level of ineptitude that allows them to get caught. Except this isn't being sold as "we want to catch the guy who beats his wife". And if it were, why not just install a 'telescreen' in everyone's house and catch them in the act?
Regarding the _encouraging people_ to get a VPN, that shouldn't be the default. The police were already in a position where they can monitor anyone they suspect of a crime. This targets _everyone_, with the false promise of safety.
Adding to that, when you couple this with Claire Perry pushing (_again_) for 'adult' sites requiring 'age verification', you're on a very slippery slope.
Because it's easier to crack open a window someone left unlocked.
Assuming (caveat: big assumption) a legitimate implementation, I bet WhatsApp is the big frustration in the UK - it was already hugely popular here before it went end-to-end encrypted.
Do you have a source for that? If true I find it very bizarre.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/malcolm-turnbulls-sky-news...
> “If on the other hand I communicate with you via Skype for a voice call or Viber, send you a message on WhatsApp or Wickr or Threema or Signal or Telegrammer — there’s a gazillion of them — or indeed if you make a FaceTime call, then all that the telco can see, insofar as it can see anything, is that my device has had a connection with the Skype server or the WhatsApp server; it doesn’t see anything happening with you.
> “There are always ways for people to get around things, but of course a lot of people don’t, and that’s why I’ve always said the data retention laws, the use of metadata, is not a silver bullet. It’s not a 100% guarantee. It is one tool in many tools.”
I've been nursing a theory for a long time that modern society has an accidental saving grace. And that is, if you're competent, its usually better to just not commit crime. Think about it - any criminal can learn lockpicking today via the internet, but few do. Why? Because if you're capable of investing time and energy into honing a skill, you may as well do something above board. Don't break and enter - become a locksmith instead. Don't manage a team of criminals - become a manager at a company. It pays better. Its less risky. There's more services and social support available. You won't go to jail. You can have friends who aren't criminals.
And because of that the people who are left committing the vast majority of crime do so in part because they're not good at long term planning. Which is something law enforcement takes complete advantage of. So, almost no petty criminals are going to know about VPNs. They aren't going to commit to a monthly subscription to a VPN provider. They won't set up a PP2P tunnel on their phone and laptop. Why? Again because if they knew to do that sort of stuff they could probably hold down a stable job in low level tech support.
Obviously there's exceptions to this, but the bread and butter of law enforcement isn't bank heists. Its someone who's drunk. Its someone who smashed a window and stole some money because they want to get high. Or stole a phone out of someone's hand and ran off with it. Or went out with the boys to beat someone up "who had it coming".
When the (then) Australian minister for communication introduced record keeping laws for ISPs he told people they can bypass it a number of ways. Lots of people were confused by that - but it makes sense. The aim isn't to record data from us, or from our community. They don't care about taxpayers who are gainfully employed. The point is to make it easier to catch that asshole who beat up his girlfriend then bragged about it to his friends on facebook.
And as a result, probably the most annoying thing we can do for law enforcement is introduce apps like Signal and the TOR browser. Stuff that makes it dead simple for anyone to maintain their privacy - you just have to use a different messenger.
(Edit: Re-watched the interview where Turnbull described how to bypass the retention bill and he wasn't as enthusiastic as I remember.)