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US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants

Posted by Soulskill on from the how-to-win-friends dept.

Advocatus Diaboli tips news that the U.S. government is now arguing it doesn't need warrants to hack servers hosted on foreign soil. At issue is the current court case against Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht. We recently discussed how the FBI's account of how they obtained evidence from Silk Road servers didn't seem to mesh with reality. Now, government lawyers have responded in a new court filing (PDF). They say that even if the FBI had to hack those servers without a warrant, it doesn't matter, because the Fourth Amendment does not confer protection to servers hosted outside the U.S. They said, "Given that the SR Server was hosting a blatantly criminal website, it would have been reasonable for the FBI to 'hack' into it in order to search it, as any such 'hack' would simply have constituted a search of foreign property known to contain criminal evidence, for which a warrant was not necessary."

2 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Please liberate us... by r_naked · · Score: 3, Funny

    To any foreign country out there that doesn't like the US government, please come liberate us and bring us democracy again. As a person that is stuck living in the hell hole that is the USA, I am begging you, please help us -- we are fucked.

    Thanks,

    -- Brian

    --
    -- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
  2. Re:Color Me Surprised by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Funny

    they can hack me without warrants, can I hack them without warrants?

    Yes.

    Disclaimer: IANAL

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it