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FBI Seeks To Legally Hack You If You're Connected To TOR Or a VPN
SonicSpike writes The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a search warrant. It's called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without providing any specific details as long as the target computer location has been hidden through a technical tool like Tor or a virtual private network. It would also allow nonspecific search warrants where computers have been intentionally damaged (such as through botnets, but also through common malware and viruses) and are in five or more separate federal judicial districts. Furthermore, the provision would allow investigators to seize electronically stored information regardless of whether that information is stored inside or outside the court's jurisdiction.
but if you use it, that is grounds for us to take it away.
Makes perfect sense in an inside the belt way sort of way.
If the FBI starts to attack Tor and VPN users, those users are going to fight back.
Both TFA and the summary wildly misrepresent what this is all about. The FBI is NOT asking for permission to attack anyone that happens to be using Tor or a VPN. What they are asking for is the ability to get a warrant to search a particular Tor/VPN node, that appears to be engaging in criminal activity, without knowing who the owner is or where the system is physically located.
Why would my employer fire me for using the corporate VPN from home? That's precisely what the VPN is for!
The US government funded Tor development and encourages its use as a way to avoid repressive governments and then considers its use in the US to be a suspcious act.
The irony, it burns!
The ability to get a warrant "without providing specific details" and the person doesn't have to be within the court's jurisdiction.
That's, um, just as troubling as it sounds.
You can't really separate those things. The simple fact of securing information is that once it's out you have zero control over where it goes.
As a company, the only outside people who should get access to your information are your lawyers and entities that have signed an NDA. Unless GCHQ is going to sign an NDA, a competent Airbus managment can not tolerate snooping.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
ALL major online email providers (google mail, yahoo, microsoft, etc.)
That horse has already left the barn, they even poked fun at Google's internal setup with a doodle. There was no enormous shitstorm. Google responded by encrypting their internal traffic (or announcing that they did, anyway) and life went on. Millions upon millions of Americans simply don't care, and millions more actually want the government reading everyone's email because they think it protects us from them ay-rab turrists. Until the surveillance apparatus somehow fucks up football or The Voice or Pawn Stars, nobody's going to give a shit.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!