UK: New powers for police to hack your PC

Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain.

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Hacking – known as "remote searching" – has been quietly adopted by police across Britain following the development of technology to access computers' contents at a distance. Police say it is vital for tracking cyber-criminals and paedophiles and is used sparingly but civil liberties groups fear it is about to be vastly expanded.

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Computer hacking has to be approved by a chief constable, who must be satisfied the action is proportionate to the crime being investigated.

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Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights campaign group Liberty, said such a vast expansion of police powers should be regulated by a new Act of Parliament and that police should be forced to apply to a court for a warrant to hack into computers.

She said: "This is no different from breaking down someone's door, rifling through their paperwork and seizing their computer hard drive."

Ms Chakrabarti said the organisation believed it had strong grounds to challenge the practice both under British and European law.