back to article Hackers claim to have cracked Norway mass-murderer's email

A hacking group claims to have broken into two email accounts maintained by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist who killed more than 70 people in attacks that shocked the world last month. The hacking crew, who call themselves Noria, reportedly hacked into Breivik's email accounts after …

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  1. Brian Miller

    Not helping!

    Not only may the email be inadmisable, but the defense can say that it is tampered evidence. Plus the police don't know if the email hasn't been tampered.

    The only way now for the police to get good evidence is to obtain an order for the backups.

    1. Arctic fox

      @Brian Miller Maybe, maybe not.

      I read the original reports in the papers this morning here in Norway and the police were asked about exactly that point and the reply was "it depends on the circumstances". What they were referring to was the fact that under Norwegian law if the police themselves or someone acting on their behalf (in the direct sense) had done this then, yes it would indeed be inadmissible. However, under other circumstances it is possible that the court could and would rule the evidence as admissible although the issue of tampering would of course also have to be addressed. They will of course obtain an order for the backups anyway, part of their problem has been the sheer scale of the crime (in Norwegian context) and the amount of evidence both forensic in the conventional sense and the digital is on such a scale that there is a fair amount that they literally have not had time to get to yet.

  2. Yag
    Trollface

    "But any fruits of what started out as an illegal hacking act would be inadmissible in court."

    Too bad! the court will only have to rely on the dozens of corpses and eye witnesses then...

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      Not that easy

      We know he killed them, he has admitted it himself in court. The question is whether he is mad or bad, and the emails would help determine that.

  3. Steven Jones

    Oh dear, there goes the court case...

    "But any fruits of what started out as an illegal hacking act would be inadmissible in court."

    I have a sneaky suspicion that the verdict on Anders Behring Breivik is not going to depend this bit of evidence. However, what may have been lost is information on whether there are any other right-wing nut-cases out there who would perpetrate something similar or who may have some culpability on this one. In any event, if this is a managed email service, they will surely have backups with the originals.

    1. Dave Bell

      Intelligence?

      That is more of an intelligence issue, though it may make it more difficult to get a warrant against somebody identified through these email accounts. Somehow, I doubt it. A reasonable cause to look for evidence doesn't have to be evidence itself. (Though the way some types of crime are investigated does justify a more rigorous standard.)

      Any way, if there's an email found from Fred the Fascist in these compromised accounts, there's likely a copy of it elsewhere.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    The police are sleeping, then?

    Wouldn't the FIRST order of day to be to get the communications files to check if they mention accomplices, who might flee? What have the Police been doing?

    1. mr.K
      Coat

      What are they doing? A lot.

      I do not know how many e-mail accounts he had, but the police is of course working on it. There are about 100 detectives working on the case, and then we have all the forensic technicians (if that is the correct English term) and support personnel. The police have according to Norwegian law declared everybody at the island, about 700 people (mostly youths), victims of the crime. Also declared to be victims are the close relatives of those that were there, everybody at the scene of the bombing, everybody that were supposed to be there, everybody that usually works there, the rescue personnel and volunteers involved at the island and some on the bombing scene, and probably a few I have forgot.

      Since they are treating each kill as a separate murder and are going to collect evidence on each of them, all of these people are to be interviewed by the police. In addition they have spent two weeks searching the entire island square inch for square inch for shell casings, other evidence and all electronic equipment that might have captured parts of the event. I suspect that they are going trough all the phone logs at and around the island as well.

      Then they have set out to map all his movements and actions over the last nine years.

      So, that is what they are doing. If you really wondered. About his e-mail accounts, Google contacted them almost immediately to start the work of releasing all e-mail and information associated with it. As far as I know this process is ongoing, if not resolved already, between the police, the Norwegian government, the US government and Google. Even in an open and shut case like this, an American company can't just hand over information to a foreign power, even if the information is about a citizen of said foreign power.

      The last thing we need is for these other criminals to come and "help" the police. It is a waste of time and resources. There is a reason this is done by the book, and all this does is creating a web of dead ends. All accesses to these accounts has to be investigated since there is a chance they could have been done by accomplices.

      In addition these hacks are of course a crime committed against Anders Behring Breivik and I think that is the last thing the police wants to investigate right now.

      The people that did this are muppets, bleedin' muppets. And if I ever...what? Yes, that is my hat and coat...

    2. puffspluslotion

      What have the police been doing?

      Complaining about video games, shooting people, that sort of thing

  5. TheRead
    Trollface

    Murdoch is going to be upset!

    He was about to hack in himself and plant some emails about how Breivik was actually a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and part of a Liberal conspiracy to make Conservatives in America look bad.

    1. YARR
      Alien

      Something strange...

      You might think this idea is a joke, but I wouldn't be surprised if conspiracy theorists are currently working on this one, trying to connect it to the NWO agenda. Breivik's membership of the Freemasons is particularly out of character for a far right extremist.

  6. Paul Shirley

    Norwegian law allows that evidence to be used

    Norwegian law allows use of illegally obtained evidence at the judges discretion, it's one of the differences between adversarial and inquisitorial systems and apparently Norwegian criminal law is partially inquisitorial.

    Further, EU law (specifically the human rights) also allows use of illegally obtained evidence.

    Whilst it's likely the court won't admit this data that's unlikely to stop the police using it.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. TeeCee Gold badge
        Joke

        @Def

        "Norway isn't part of the EU."

        How can that possibly be? It's impossible to exist in Europe without being part of the EU, it would be economic suicide. Your entire country could go bust..........oh..........hang on a moment.........

      2. Dave Bell

        ECHR and EU

        The ECHR isn't part of the EU: it's one of several Europe-wide things which have come to heavily overlap the EU. We're one of the countries which set up the ECHR, before the EU (or EEC as it was) ever came into existence.

        There's people who do seem to like mashing all these different things together. I'm not at all sure of their motives in doing so, but blaming the ECHR on the EU is one of their usual lies.

  7. jco
    Boffin

    @Yag

    What about all the people involved in the terrorist attacks that may be discovered with their emails?

    Those emails are the ones that would not be admitted in court. I think nobody doubts about the author of the attacks themselves.

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