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

Two things:

[gstoddart]

the proposal could authorize remote searches on the data of millions of Americans simultaneouslyâ"particularly those who share a network or routerâ"and cautioned it rested on shaky legal footing

1) Of course it is
2) That's the frickin' point

See, the people advocating unlimited surveillance couldn't possibly be stupid enough to not know this.

They just don't give a fuck.

This is "Yarg! We need security by any means, and if we shit on your rights, too fucking bad, because we're the good guys".

These clowns might actually believe they're "doing this for the greater good" -- but so does every fascist and dictator who decides they will do it anyway and we'll thank them later.

Unfortunately, since these people have sworn to uphold the Constitution, I think they should be hanged or shot. Because whatever they think they're protecting, they're doing more damage to our liberties than they are solving problems. In fact, they've become the problem.

Once they get over their illusion they're doing it for our own good, then the fun really begins, and the fascism really goes into effect.

Law enforcement have basically said "fuck the law, the law is what we say it is". And they feel entitled to do anything they want to. Which means law enforcement is more or less deeming themselves in charge of everything.

Re:Two things:

[davydagger]

god help you if you ask them what security they provide.

First you'll find that the powers you gave them "only to fight terrorism" are being used to drug cases and other petty crime

Next you'll find that drug cases and other petty crime are only against personal enemies, and done with such dubious methods you cannot be sure of their guilt, and their powers aren't being used to find bad guys, but to frame people.

What the three letter soup wants is power to frame people and not have the framing questioned, by framing anyone who questions them.

You see we've been tacitly complicit in giving up our rights to fight "the war on drugs", but instead of stomping out drug use, drug use has soared, and our rights have been abandonded. They have no intention of protecting you from drugs or terrorism, and don't mind the occational terrorist or drug lord from causing a muckety muck to expand their powers.

Re:Google don't care about you

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You don't have to like or trust Google(and you shouldn't) to agree that "Hey, let's quietly change rule 41 so that all you need to 'remote search'(by means tactfully unspecified) a computer anywhere is the approval of a judge, doesn't much matter which, from one of the 94 federal districts, rather than one at least vaguely related to the matter at hand!" is...perhaps...a bad move.

Re:I don't get it...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Parallel Construction"... What good is a cool, powerful, sinister toy if you don't have a cover story that allows you to lie about the origins of evidence that would otherwise be inadmissible?

Jurisdictional reach around

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose you let judges authorize surveillance where the location cannot be determined. Five things would happen:

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.

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

[CrimsonAvenger]

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).

Meaningless in the USA, at least. An "informed voter" has the same candidate choice as the uninformed voter, and the candidates have been vetted by the Parties.