Google: FBI's Plan To Expand Hacking Power a "Monumental" Constitutional Threat

schwit1 writes with news about Google's reservations to a Justice Department proposal on warrants for electronic data. "Any change in accessing computer data should go through Congress, the search giant said. The search giant submitted public comments earlier this week opposing a Justice Department proposal that would grant judges more leeway in how they can approve search warrants for electronic data. The push to change an arcane federal rule "raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal, and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide," wrote Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement and information security. The provision, known as Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure, generally permits judges to grant search warrants only within the bounds of their judicial district. Last year, the Justice Department petitioned a judicial advisory committee to amend the rule to allow judges to approve warrants outside their jurisdictions or in cases where authorities are unsure where a computer is located. Google, in its comments, blasted the desired rule change as overly vague, saying the proposal could authorize remote searches on the data of millions of Americans simultaneously—particularly those who share a network or router—and cautioned it rested on shaky legal footing."

Comments

Google don't care about you

[Anonymous Coward]

Before going "good for Google" remember that they don't care about you - they only care about making sure the product (you) continues using their services so they can sell you to their real customers.

Signed, the pissed off person who has just discovered that he can only watch age rated Youtube movies on his new phone after he creates a Google Plus profile (with all that involves). :-(

Re:Damn if this goverment doesn't need MORE power!

[Anonymous Coward]

"What to all men with power want? More power." -- The Oracle.

The only forces that can stop the government from attaining more power are:

1) Wealthy special interest groups that want that power for themselves and have enough clout to fight for it (like Google, in this specific case).
2) Unified pushback, in the form of informed voting, on the part of the majority of voters (extremely rare, as the issue has to be very direct and poignant for this to happen).

That's the way it is. Have a nice day.

Re:Jurisdictional reach around

[Anonymous Coward]

1) FBI would not try to determine the location, because they might find it is an unfriendly location with an unfriendly judge
2) FBI would shop for jurisdiction. Just as patent trolls all go to Marshall Texas, the troll rubber stamping capital of the world, so the FBI will go to whatever district will rubber stamp their requests.
3) Fail to get the warrant? There's no cross linkage between districts, judges won't spot they're being asked again for the same warrant, so FBI can simply keep hawking the request around till the get it.
4) Target will be listed as 'terrorist', actual target device will be router through which millions of peoples data passes, but then why would a judge in Aspen care about people in Newyork. They're not his family and his friends.
5) The FBI contracts this out to NSA, who accidentally store all the info while processing the warrants in these giant data centers they accidentally built, and accidentally data mine it

This, that, those, and the others.

As the old saying goes, "Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible."

> In its own comments, the Justice Department accused some opponents of the rule change of "misreading the text of the proposal or misunderstanding current law."

And that's pretty much the dead giveaway. A bunch of non-lawyers can see the loopholes you cite from a mile away, and a bunch of actual lawyers whose day job is finding whatever loopholes the law allows that will strengthen their cases are pretending to be willfully blind. Methinks they doth protest too much.