Charged with possession of a book?

Yeah the last cookbook I read was talking about Kermit >_<, the hacking stuff in most of it is so out of date it's not funny.

The Chemistry doesn't change much though

Originally Posted by PsychoCannon

Yeah the last cookbook I read was talking about Kermit >_<, the hacking stuff in most of it is so out of date it's not funny.

The Chemistry doesn't change much though

Alas, we disagree. The anarchists cookbook never did contain much hacking (in the sense of the word that I understand). It was always about the abuse of a system to meet some form of gain.

Hacking is more about re-engineering the system so that it functions differently. Perhaps pedantry, but for example, I wouldn't call lock picking hacking, neither is cracking a password IMO.

Re-writing low level system applications to throw buffer overruns & the use of NOOP-sleds, now that's another story. But if you didn't re-write it then you just stumbled on some sloppy coding, you didn't hack it. (Hacking also involves fixing things not just breaking them).

Sorry, I'll stop the geek stuff now.

[northwind]

Someone told them "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing", and books are FULL of the stuff! It could go off at any moment!

I'm just enjoying the idea of an Al Queda Manual. "Difficulty rating: 4 AK-47s. Assembly is the reverse of explosion"

Just showing a total lack of imagination, the Al Queda book can't be that bad.

How about this one or this one

Oh I agree totally especially as they covered social engineering in a lot of the articles.

It's just as they were always called "Hacking" "Phracking" etc I've just come to use those terms when refering to them

When I mocked up a login screen in Access and crashed out windows so that it was the only process running and renamed the process so it looked totally legit that was more social engineering than hacking but it worked =p

Gotta say on the 'manual' in question then I agree with Matt that presumption of some sort of guilt and/or charging people with a crime for possession of said book is a little too fascistic for my liking. Heck, I even read the 'cookbook' under discussion, just out of interest. Never did anything in it, just found it an interesting browse!

The flip side of the coin on the argument is to catch people who they otherwise could not. For e.g. watching one of those UK police programmes, was in the Manchester/Salford region...2 cops get called out to a suspected burglary. 2 lads been seen about, glass heard smashing etc. etc. all on a quiet estate in the middle of the night (an estate they evidently didn't live in). They find the lads, you know the look, trackies/caps/hands down trousers etc. Seeing as the call was non-specific they can't find a point of entry on a house, and there are loads to search so it seems they can't prove anything. They then open the car of the 2 lads to find the boot has all sorts of 'implements' in it, bolt-cutters, thick gloves, bin liners, complete changes of clothing, small ladder etc. etc.

The copper in charge said they could only hold them for going 'equipped to burgle' or something similar (which I didn't even know was a legitimate offence). Couldn't prove they had done anything even though it seems pretty damn obvious they were guilty of something. A case similar to the possession of the training manual no? Where does the line blur between trying to get those responsible even if they can't quite prove it and harassing innocent civilians?

Tough call I think.

Originally Posted by MeridiaNx

The copper in charge said they could only hold them for going 'equipped to burgle' or something similar (which I didn't even know was a legitimate offence). Couldn't prove they had done anything even though it seems pretty damn obvious they were guilty of something. A case similar to the possession of the training manual no? Where does the line blur between trying to get those responsible even if they can't quite prove it and harassing innocent civilians?

Tough call I think.

It is an offence, along the same lines, with less severity than attempted murder. You might not of done the actual crime, but that doesn't detract from you being a criminal. It's also the sort of difference between manslaughter, and premeditated murder (the forethought).

I agree though, tough call to make. I'd presonally rather be arrested for suspicion of terrorism than be blown up though.

True but, though I'm no legal buff, surely in a lot of attempted murder cases the person has actually physically tried to kill someone but failed? I'm not arguing here, just musing out loud. 'Cos if you hadn't actually tried then we'd be looking at a Minority Report-style pre-crime thing. Same with manslaughter and pre-med, they are rightly differentiated but the fact remains in both cases that someone has died as a result of the defendant's actions.

In the case of the chav burglars however, there was nothing apart from suspicion and circumstantial evidence particularly as they couldn't even find a break-in. I agree, in this case, it was comforting to see they got done for something because it seemed pretty clear that they had done it but the coppers just couldn't find the house. However, flip-side is that all those items were all usuable from a tradesmans point of view, and they were just picking their car up. Tenuous I know, and as I say, their responses didn't help them and they got done. Still, similar idea to the 'Terror Manual'.

Odd though, because I thought arresting the chavs quite right, but the possession of a book not to be so even though I'm arguing they're similar. Goes to show my own prejudice perhaps