No, Hutchinson found the documents by searching on Google for the meeting minutes. The website might have protected the place where you found the link to the meeting minutes, but the meeting minutes themselves were hosted in a directory that not only was publicly accessible if you had the URL, but also allowed Google's crawler to access it and store it.
There is a slippery slope here, either way (if he gets free or if he gets sentenced), but none the less, Google is relevant to the case.
He was taken into custody and later released under investigation. Following a review of all available evidence, it was determined no offences had been committed and no further action was taken
So they already dropped it.
That doesn’t make it okay. Being taken into custody is something I’d consider an overreaction and frightening for a person to endure. They should’ve looked into it before moving to pick them up in the first place. If the shoe was on the other foot- an activist claiming a developer broke in to obtain info- I bet police would’ve done more research.
Fully agreed. And not just that, the law enforcement officers seized his personal devices (phone + laptop) for 4 weeks and went through them.
Note: I am not sure if both phone+laptop were taken away for 4 weeks, but the article states that both were seized at one point, and explicitly mentions that the laptop was held for 4 weeks before being returned.
Information sharing between members of the federation would reduce crime and spread of violent content. For example, when Google links a visitor to a harmful website, they can ping the local police with basic metadata about that user (could reuse the code from GDPR export). Google can lend its AI to categorize the alerts so local police know to be on the lookout for e.g. support for “The Big Lie” or local militia groups.
This way, the officers can stay aware of any potential threats to the safety of the children in their town, but maintain the ability to act proportionally and in context. Continuing with the example of a violent Google search, the alert might be a “P0”, but the police live in the same community as the suspect. If they’re not familiar with the data subject yet, they can use the alert to get a warrant for more information from Google. Or maybe they know the alert is a false alarm because the suspect is actually a government worker researching misinformation networks, so they instruct the AI to ignore alerts like it in the future.
We need to be on alert. With the proliferation of encryption, protecting citizens from harmful and increasingly dangerous information has never been more critical.
I'm sure the post reads as satire.
In the UK, an arrest under reasonable suspicion gives them the right to search your property for evidence, and to be honest they had reasonable suspicion, he had private company documents.
It's not like that company can cry wolf again, the police will be far more skeptical next time of their claims, having dealt with them before.
it is absolutely not fair. The fair would be if the company had to show before the arrest that it was minimally secure. I mean they for sure had the HTTP transaction in their own logs - like GET document, response 200. They couldn't have reasonably in good faith claim "secure" and "hacking". What the company did is bordering on the false police report, and it would be fair if there were a recourse for the falsely arrested to use against the company.
So get off your extremely manufactured high horse.
Secondly, even if you could somehow wave a magic wand and know the logs were real, you're approaching this as an expert and not as a layman.
A crime was reported, it was followed up, an arrest was made (maybe that means something different in America? It's just an arrest). No charges were levied, now the company that reported it look like fools in national news.
They'll not be pulling this shit again.
From what I see on Wikipedia, there is restricted access to someone's criminal record in the UK, but on the other hand, you can't get a complete version of your own record, and arrests may be obtainable by prospective employers in some circumstances.
"Arrests that do not lead to an official finding of guilt, i.e. a conviction or the acceptance of a caution, are not considered part of a person's criminal record and are not typically disclosed as part of the process. However, an enhanced disclosure may include such additional information, which is supplied at the chief police officer's discretion. Enhanced disclosures are typically used to screen applicants for positions such as police officer, social worker, and teacher, which involve contact with vulnerable groups and children.
Individuals and the self-employed cannot apply for a DBS check of their own criminal record, as they cannot ask an exempted question (a valid request for a person to reveal their full criminal history, including spent convictions) of themselves. Only organisations registered with the DBS can ask an exempted question and submit applications for criminal records checks. There are two types of registered organisation: a registered body, which is the employer; and an umbrella body, a registered body that processes criminal record checks for non-registered organisations who can ask the exempted question."
an arrest record searchable by all the prospective employers (until you spend an effort/money to seal it in jurisdictions where it is possible, and even then you still would have to disclose it any time you deal with federals). Good luck finding a job anywhere where computers are present with an arrest for hacking.
I wonder how many people who say, "just an arrest" have actually been through being arrested.
Don't you agree that's totally irrelevant? Being arrested for downloading a random doc from the internet is a real problem, so as monitoring dissidents to persecute them for any reason at all.
Edit: Whoops, all of my assumptions were wrong!
As far as I can see, Google provided a search-result, which eventually (after Google's batted it around internally a few times) turns into an HTTP request to the CBS website, which resulted in password-free access to a public document.
So that will show up in the CBS webserver's access log; that's how they got the IP address. Nothing to do with Google.
Getting from the IP address to the person is messier; websearches, requests to ISPs, and presumably searches of activist databases the cops no doubt maintain might all have played a part.
My guess is the cops knew there was no case against him, because they tried the URL, and saw that there was no password challenge; but charged him anyway, because he was an activist, and they wanted to intimidate him.
> Hutchinson said his identification by Leathermarket and subsequent arrest raised questions in his mind, saying police confirmed to him that the company had handed over an access log containing IP addresses:
They're denying a tautology! A document is not password protected if you can access it without a password. A person not in a vehicle cannot commit a moving traffic violation. However, the automated computer system which issues those tickets does not actually comprehend those concepts, or any concepts at all. It merely follows rigid rules to send an alert on access to a particular file, or to issue a ticket with to the owner of the license plate number identified by the camera when a speed sensor returns a value not less than the speed limit (eg. NaN).
But who is the "they" who are denying those tautologies? As we abstract more and more to automated systems, it's important to remember that these systems are as dumb as a brick. A brick connected to the Internet and with very complicated melted sand inside, but a brick nonetheless. When decisions recommended by these bricks have significant consequences, it's important to keep a human in the loop.
It seems that the bigger issue is that the activist was arrested by the police on supposedly only IP address evidence presented by the company/society.
Somehow the IP had to be linked to the person, probably a warrant should be needed for that too.
> A man who viewed documents online for a controversial London property development and *shared them on social media* was raided by police after developers claimed there had been a break-in to their systems.
"...Hutchinson said his identification by Leathermarket and subsequent arrest raised questions in his mind, saying police confirmed to him that the company had handed over an access log containing IP addresses: "Now, how that ended up with me being in the frame, I don't know. There's part of this that doesn't add up..." ..."
A possibly more accurate title would be: "Activist raided by London police after downloading docs found on Google Search"
The core issue is the government raided someones house for doing nothing wrong.
[Edit: the article didn't say they charged him; I was wrong]
Well, that's how it looks to me, on the basis of a single report in a tech journal with a sort-of tabloid outlook. Maybe there will be more information in coming days.
The article explicitly says that the police did not charge him.
But they did arrest him.
Eh?
https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-w...
Basically Police arrest, looked at the evidence then took no action as Police decided no crime - therefore not charged.
Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial.
He was definitely in a jam
Uh, so if someone set fire to a bunch of homes in a neighborhood, and there's video of them doing it, but they did it knowing the homes were empty, they should just be left free until the trial is over? I'm sorry but I feel like a lot of online comments on criminal justice are very shortsighted
Financial crimes, no. Holding them hostage isn't useful or productive. As long as they are cooperative with investigation, let them be until a verdict is reached.
It's too easy for governments to accuse people on a whim of financial "crimes" that aren't really crimes. That sets a very bad precedent for misuse of power. Next thing you know they'll be randomly arresting people from their bedroom for suspected tax evasion instead of auditing them. Not good for those who did follow the rules.
There are real crimes, yes, but there is too much grey area and there is no danger to people or property to let financial crime suspects be at home.
We're talking about The Register here. Clickbait is foundational to their business model.
The key bit is
> The raid by four Metropolitan Police constables took place after Southwark campaigner Robert Hutchinson was reportedly accused of illegally entering a password-protected area of a website.
> "I was searching in Google and found links to board meeting minutes," he told The Register. "Board reports, none of which were marked confidential. So I have no question that it was in the public domain."
So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait when the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data.