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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.
1. Run FF via TOR using valgrind.
2. Trace data flow
3. Harvest Exploit
4. Harden FF
5. Sell Exploit
I wouldn't be surprised if people put up honeypots on Tor just to mess with 'em, and log all of the output over serial or something so that even if they get in, they can't purge the logs of their attempts.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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!
I'm sure Airbus cared when the GCHQ snooped on the details of a bidding process and handed over the details to Boeing.
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.
Articles like this often get written because the author doesn't really understand the law, and rather than really trying to understand what's going on they just guess. The claims made in this article are so wildly off-base, however, that it makes me question whether the author is just trolling people.
Contrary to what the article suggests, Federal Criminal Rule 41(b) does not have a thing to do with what evidence law enforcement agencies are required to show to get a warrant, nor does it authorize the FBI (or anyone else) to get any particular type of warrant. Rule 41(b) is about VENUE; e.g., if you've already got enough evidence to get a search warrant, what judge (in what federal District) is the judge that you are supposed to present that evidence to?
You can read Rule 41(b) here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/rul...
The basic rule it sets out is that, when you want a warrant, you ask a judge located within the District where the person/property you want to search is located. There are exceptions to that basic rule, much like any other rule, because it's not always a simple matter of "X is located here." Sometimes things are located across several different Districts, sometimes they're mobile and can be easily moved to another District, etc. This is why there are currently 5 subsections to 41(b), each dealing with slightly different semi-unusual factual scenarios. At the end of the day, each exception is there for a very simple reason: to clearly and unambiguously tell federal law enforcement agencies how to identify the judge they are supposed to go to if they want to get a search warrant.
The proposal for changing Rule 41(b) is located here: http://justsecurity.org/wp-con...
What the DOJ is asking for is a scenario not currently covered by Rule 41(b). That being...what happens if you are dealing with someone you know to have committed a crime, you have enough evidence to get a search warrant, but the perpetrator of the crime is using some sort of technological means (like encryption, IP masking, etc.) to prevent you from finding the exact physical location of whatever you want to search? As of right now, it is not clear who the right judge would be to issue that warrant. The only thing the proposal would do is say that, if you can't identify the physical location of the computer to be searched (and therefore do not know which federal District it's located in), then you can go get your warrant from a judge in the District where the target of the crime was located.
Example: I'm an evil h@xx3r, and I hack some computers at the GooglePlex. I have masked my IP address, so the FBI does not know exactly where I'm at. Under current Rule 41(b), it's not clear who the right judge would be to try to get a warrant from. Under "new" Rule 41(b), they can go to a judge in California since that's where the GooglePlex is located.
That's literally the only thing this proposal would change. It says nothing about VPNs or TOR networks. It does not give the FBI (or any other law enforcement agency) the authority to hack your computer or your phone whenever they want. It doesn't even grant them the authority to do that with a warrant, because they already have the ability to do that with a warrant. It also doesn't say anything about how much evidence they have to present to get the warrant, because Rule 41(b) has nothing to do with that. The standards for search warrants are exactly the same as they have been for years; this proposal would only clarify who the right judge is to issue the warrant.
I don't know a whole heck of a lot about the "FEE" is, but if this article is representative of their work and/or legal abilities then color me unimpressed.
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
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.
Ever heard of that treasonous document that starts out "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."?
It goes on to say: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the people who fought for the Colonies independence were committing treason.
Indeed, the 2nd Amendment self-state purpose is to allow the citizens to preserve their freedom from a despotic federal government that was being formed by the same document. Rather, the government being formed could become despotic and need to be thrown off, and the the 2nd provides the basis for that.
This is pretty clear from various Founder's explanations, e.g. Alexander Hamliton "[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude[, ] that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens."
The Framers had *just* completed an armed (and treasonous) insurrection of their own, and were keenly aware of the fact that any government they might form could (and probably would) become despotic. The 2nd at least put a floor under the people's ability to fight back against that potential.
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!