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DOJ Requests More Power To Hack Remote Computers
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Department of Justice says it needs greater authority to hack remote computers in the course of an investigation. The agency reasons that criminal operations involving computers are become more complicated, and argues that its own capabilities need to scale up to match them. An ACLU attorney said, 'By expanding federal law enforcement's power to secretly exploit "zero-day"' vulnerabilities in software and Internet platforms, the proposal threatens to weaken Internet security for all of us.' This is particularly relevant in the wake of Heartbleed — it's been unclear whether the U.S. government knew about it before everyone else did. This request suggests that the DOJ, at least, did not abuse it — but it sure looks like they would've wanted to. You can read their request starting on page 499 of this committee meeting schedule."
I tell you that if you post again on Slashdot this year, there will be a deadly hurricane. Please don't do it.
Al Gore? Is that you?
You might not want to use something like this, at least you do not want to use it against criminals who themselves have a background in IT and especially IT security. Else you might be in for a nasty surprise, namely that they're employing a tripwire system that waits for someone trying to hack them as an early warning system.
In other words, your attempt to hack the criminals doubles as a "the feds are coming" flare.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bluntly, if they would prosecute me for doing it, then they better damn well have a warrant and judicial oversight.
Otherwise, it's breaking the law, and prosecution ensues.
Since they're doing it anyway (surely you're not going to believe their denials still, are you?), let it be public and provide incentive to build more resistant electronics.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm so tired of this BULLSHIT. We have such a corrupt, sleazy, crappy government. Department of "Justice". What a fucking joke.
Since our Atty General Mr. Holder, says he can choose which laws to obey, then there are no laws, no rules, except what he chooses to do.
WTF are you talking about? They're ALL bad!
By now "hacking" means "any vaguely possibly bad thing with a computer in the vicinity".
So "law enforcement" wants "more power" to do ill-defined vaguely bad things. They already do that aplenty, I say.
No.
Absolutely not.
No fucking way, for any reason.
including other countries; I did not notice anything in the article restricting this to computers in the USA. Other countries might not agree with the USA DOJ allowing computers in their countries to be cracked -- thus the USA cops/investigators will be conducting criminal acts in other countries -- how does that make them different from what the USA wanted to grab Gary McKinnon for ?
So let me get this strait. The DOJ's argument is: "If we leave the door locked, how are we supposed to catch burglars?"
They told me this would happen if I voted for McCain. And they were right!
What they didn't tell you, and what you don't seem to understand,
is that which scumbag you vote for doesn't even matter.
The show is run from behind the curtain, and most of you ( myself included )
are powerless to effect change to any degree which could possibly matter.
Enjoy your lives ( you only get one ) and quit wasting energy worrying about stuff
which you cannot change.
If you (or myself) do the same thing, it's illegal, and we're gonna be prosecuted. The law is the same for everyone (at least it should be). I'm sick & tired of that shit. Police installing cameras (without warrant) to spy on people, inside their homes, warrantless wiretapping and every other thing that is *ILLEGAL* for the common people.
If it's illegal for me to do it, it's illegal for them to do it. And yes, I hope it blows up in their faces.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The DOJ has shown its self to be incompetent.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ri...
http://gov.louisiana.gov/index...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So whenever I see government IPs in my router logs, I can sue, right? I mean, If they see my IP in theirs I'm breaking the law, right?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
It must be Biden (D)
Obama(D) wouldn't lie to us would he?
Yesterday there was a headline saying 300,000 servers remain vulnerable to Heartbleed. So the bug is still (ab)usable even after it has been published.
Gore-gasm!
Since our Atty General Mr. Holder, says he can choose which laws to obey, then there are no laws, no rules, except what he chooses to do.
Not to mention: if we had a totally secure, encrypted, spook-proof communications network (barring wiretapping warrants, of course), where would that put us as far as "national security" goes?
Oh, yeah. Back in the 1990s. Seems to me, things were actually better then, in this respect.
We've been living with that since John Mitchell was AG, and most likely long before that even. SNAFU
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...spook-proof communications network (barring wiretapping warrants, of course)...
Wait a minute. Are you saying there should be built in backdoors to accommodate them?
And the 90s? What leads you to believe it was better then, when the democrats were pushing for clipper chips, V-chips, and other restrictions on encryption? I say we have it much better now, now that we have confirmed the government is running outlaw spy agencies, and that might provide the above mentioned incentives to actually do something about it. However, trust has now gone out the window. Everybody is suspect, pretty much the way the authorities want it. And republicans and democrats will continue to dominate the narrative.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Anyone will be found guilty whenever we see fit.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Well,I can always set up a very nasty supervirus surprise if my machines are touched.Try to access my machines like that,I reserve the right to respond in kind.
The Geek Hillbilly
I'd say we have it better now, because crypto isn't "illegal" like it was when ITAR was the law of the land. However, because online connections are required, coupled with layers of complexity added to even the humble desktop, the crypto may be good, but the key is still stored under the doormat for anyone to fetch.
Pretty soon, it will be illegal to run a secure operating system such as OpenBSD.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
That's so literally illegal here, in the Eurofantacylandia. All government actions bound by the letter and the scope of the law is the fundamental basis for, well, rule of law in a society. The idea that this is not the case in the largest democracies in this world is staggering. Just think of the waste and potential for corruption!
Maybe they should request the power to put a few bankers in jail, like they did in Enron. You know, and actually *do their job*
C|N>K
Gore-gasm!
ROFLMAO Sorry I simply couldn't contain myself. Ah, that didn't come out the way I expected it to sound. Damn why is explaining my reaction to your comment so hard? Egad! Cadbury!
If more people voted McCain at least we wouldn't be turning into the United Socialist States of America. He was a bad candidate, but Mr. Hope and change is even worse
The John McCain of 2008 was still in control of his mental faculties. The John McCain of 2014 is a raving lunatic like most other geriatrics. And Mr. Hope and Change is a flat out liar and con-artist. To call him the anti-Christ would be too generous.
And the 90s? What leads you to believe it was better then, when the democrats were pushing for clipper chips, V-chips, and other restrictions on encryption?
Here's what was better: people were smart enough in the 90s to not let them do it.
Also, even the government had to get a warrant to tap a phone and call it anything remotely like "legal".
Yeah, they did pass ITAR regulation, which was really dumb, and very bad, but that only applied to exports. It didn't have anything at all to do with our internal communications. With FISA, in effect they're doing something kind of resembling ITAR on crypto but far worse, turning it on their own people.
eric holder is a treasonous scum
...people were smart enough in the 90s to not let them do it.
They weren't smart enough to vote the bums out, and now we have what we have because of it. And just because they "didn't let them do it", it doesn't mean they didn't do it anyway. The spy agencies were just as corrupt then as they are now. The only difference between then and now is that it can be done in broad daylight because... terrorism. The submissive population has been fairly constant.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If more people voted McCain at least we wouldn't be turning into the United Socialist States of America. He was a bad candidate, but Mr. Hope and change is even worse
McCain would just continue to grow the welfare and socialism for corporations.
I probably would have, but as soon as he picked the bimbo for his running mate that was out of the question for me.
Heck, I would've voted McCain/HitleryClinton over *any* ticket with Palin on it.
I try not to use crypto, but I can see a future, such as an invasion of this land, or total banning of knowledge from the hands of anyone and full intellectual property dictatorship, where you have to pay 2 cents for every word uttered etc, where it would be necessary to use encryption, together with burying your computer/disks in the backyard, and only digging it out once in a while for updates, or to get some really important knowledge off of them that you forgot, and even then encryption may not be such a great idea. There are some files on this very computer that I didn't put there nor do I want there, and there is something keeps churning my harddrive, but because it came with an official brand name recovery CD, I assume it's not hackers but the powers that be doing it, and every time I erase it from the disk, I have to reinstall the computer system, as in, they really hate it when they can't monitor me. So one attitude against this is to let the fed monitor you, at least a little bit. I hate being monitored, I hate traffic cameras, I hate warrantless entries, as a default stance, who doesn't. But we live in the real world. Ultimately, I think newer chips themselves have monitoring built into them, and there is nothing you can do in software, that won't let them remotely log on to your computer, and download files to you and change settings, or even simply erase everything, or worse, just modify everything to your disadvantage, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes obvious. If you want secure computing where the hardware does not monitor you, I suggest an authentic 386sx running DOS, and make sure it's not a fake chip pretending to be a 386sx. Or even a 486. My guess is near Pentium 2 to Pentium 3 transition is when the hardware snooping was fully implemented, as in the P2 days they were still struggling with performance, like slot1 off-chip caches, and competition, and only lately do they have performance to burn, and they can focus on other ways of power grubbing. So a P2 may be safe but not a P3. I have no clue. Even a 386sx that you found in an ancient abandoned factory with proven cobwebs and dust on it free from tampering, could be snooping on you, and remotely logonable. Is that a word, logonable?
Oh good, so he'd have been the same as Obama.
...and Godwinned. Thread over, time to go home.
"And now I'd like to entertain everybody with some fancy pageant walkin' "
"The U.S. Department of Justice says it needs greater authority to hack remote computers in the course of an investigation"
..
I would have thought it would be easier to follow the money trail
I think older computers may end up having a value, because a machine can be decently usable for most tasks and be 10+ years old. Take a Mac Plus with Word 3.x. No DRM stack. No activation. No real IP activity, even if one bothers to put the MacTCP CDEV in the system folder, etc.
Yes, the battle has been lost on the console front, it is an uphill battle on smartphones/tablets, but if one does bite the bullet and change to an OS that doesn't need to keep activated.
There might be sacrifices for security. Having a computer that is online, a computer that never touches any network, and some piece of media to swap data between the two. However, we are one hacking incident away from mandatory hardware DRM stacks, automatic scanners for copyrighted material (think WoW's Warden/VAC Ban hammer except blocking your machines from the ISP), mandatory user IDs, etc. It would be wise to always consider some other means of communication other than the Net.
Then the NSA was sleeping at the wheel.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They weren't smart enough to vote the bums out, and now we have what we have because of it. And just because they "didn't let them do it", it doesn't mean they didn't do it anyway.
No, they didn't do it anyway. This discussion was about V-chips and Clipper Chips. The Clipper Chip, for example, was a chip that was supposed to be put in every phone in America -- by law -- supposedly to "encrypt" your conversation and make it "more secure".
Nobody who knew anything about it in those days thought it was a good idea. And they said so.
But people post 9-11 got all scared and let the government pass all kinds of shitty laws, in spite of warnings from the people who knew better. And we are just starting to see the effects of that now.
So, yeah. Plain old history says folks in the 90s WERE smarter, in that respect. At least they listened to warnings, back then, and were LESS likely to trust government.
Given our recent experience with people trusting government, I sincerely hope they learned something.
No, they didn't do it anyway.
Yes, they did. They just gave it a different name, and didn't discuss it publicly. The unwritten "agreement" is that strong encryption will not be available to the public. And people were no smarter then either. They still overwhelmingly voted for republicans and democrats, who were just as crooked then as now. So the trust issue is moot. The only difference is that they had to act more covertly until they got their "Pearl Harbor". I can assure you nothing has changed aside from the subtle change in submissiveness and the rate of decline.
I sincerely hope they learned something.
We won't know until November, but all indications are it will be business as usual. I see the propaganda the Americans call "news", and with 90% reelection rates I can only expect the worst.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"hacking computers", or "placing trojans" and other such things primarily do one thing: They make evidence useless. Because you can't prove anymore that you did not plant it, that you didn't change anything and that you did not open a backdoor for a third party.
How stupid can you get? And why haven't the forensic specialists of the DOJ told them what their request really would mean?
I've got some other great ideas in the same vein:
- Drop cleanliness regulations for DNA testing labs
- Don't require physical evidence be sealed. And leave doors to it unlocked, so everyone can go and tamper some.
I can understand a secret service that wants to do these things, but a law enforcement agency really, really can't allow it. Much less propose it.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
I have indirectly worked on the US PAT act (back in mid-2000), and supported the work that we did. However, while I had issues (it was the neo-cons that psuhed for NSA to go un-monitored, so that they would not have to take responsibilities; spineless trash), I had no issue with it being the NSA. They have NO ENFORCEMENT capabilities. They had no branch that allowed them to enforce any laws. I am sorry, but as such, the NSA was NOT breaking the constitution since they could only pass on the information.
NOW, along comes the DOJ and THEY want some of those capabilities. Not only say no, but SAY FUCKING NO!!!!!.
THIS is where the constitution will be breached. Frankly, I am nothing less than shocked that dems would even come up with such insanity. I know that the neo-cons wanted this for the DOJ back then, but were afraid of the dems finding out. BUT, it will not matter WHOM is in office. This will be abused. Most likely not by O, BUT, by the first president in which we ignore this
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.