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US Says It Can Hack Foreign Servers Without Warrants
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."
"Are you living abroad and doing the hacking at the behest of a foreign government? Then go right ahead, but it should be treated as the act of war that it is, just as any other country that has servers hacked at the behest of the US government should do".
Actually, the USA has committed acts of war against dozens of nations since 1945 - and presumably there is no act of limitations on a state of war. That is, if you bomb a nation's territory, fire cruise missiles into it, assassinate its citizens with drones, apply commercial sanctions to it, or attack it financially, you are then in a state of war with that nation. So every one of those nations is entitled, under international law, to use any weapons or other military methods against the USA.
Moreover, the USA has repeatedly committed the supreme international crime of launching unprovoked aggressive wars. Hence, under the very doctrine put forth by the US government as reported in TFA, any foreign government is entitled to hack any servers in the USA - including those of the government and its agencies.
Unless, of course, the US government believes that it is different from all other nations, and that international law does not apply to it. The view expressed by the parent boils down to "might makes right" - the ancient principle enshrined in the Melian Dialogue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Human rights don't work that way. The US Constitution is very carefully worded, especially regarding where it says "person" or "people" and where it says "citizen" or "citizens".
Here's the Fourth Amendment:
That doesn't say "citizens". It says "The right of the people".