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Judicial Committee Approves FBI Plan To Expand Hacking Powers
Presto Vivace sends this report from the National Journal:
A judicial advisory panel Monday quietly approved a rule change that will broaden the FBI's hacking authority despite fears raised by Google that the amended language represents a "monumental" constitutional concern. The Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules voted 11-1 to modify an arcane federal rule to allow judges more flexibility in how they approve search warrants for electronic data, according to a Justice Department spokesman. Known as Rule 41, the existing provision generally allows judges to approve search warrants only for material within the geographic bounds of their judicial district. But the rule change, as requested by the department, would allow judges to grant warrants for remote searches of computers located outside their district or when the location is unknown.
It just wasn't enough - apparently, there were seven more required.
And laws there prohibit this? Will that government be able to hack the FBI as *they're* doing something illegal?
This could get funny.
Is available to the Chinese
and it doesn't end with "and they lived happily ever after".
Sorry, but our legal system is based on Common Law, not just whatever a bunch of Congressional idiots decides it is.
Further, the change would allow searches when "the location is unknown". Sorry, but that's a blatant constitutional violation.
"... and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." -- Amendment IV
Our very Constitution says quite explicitly they aren't allowed to issue warrants for "unknown" locations.
You need a warrant to do anything legally, and in this case "finding out where a computer is" is cause to write a search warrant. The only problem is that in order to write a search warrant for a computer on the internet that is literally just an IP address to the investigator, one must acknowledge that computer could possibly be on the other side of the planet when accessed by the FBI.
Fuck the Police!
Well that's just fantastic.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
The FBI can finally go after those Nigerian princes!
We already know that the FBI routinely violates the fourth and fifth amendments for their own convenience, and there's no reason to believe that they'll comply with any other laws or regulations.
The only way to solve the FBI/NSA/CIA problem is to abolish them, bar any of their current minions from ever being employed by the government again, and start from scratch with people who understand that they can end up in jail for violating our civil rights.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What it will allow, is the FBI to skip the jurisdiction investigation since it would render it unnecessary and unwanted. Unnecessary because they can get a hacking warrant without it, and unwanted, because it might turn out they don't have jurisdiction or need a more difficult form of warrant.
It will also let them jurisdiction shop, so the judge that rubber stamps hacking the one that gets the requests, and the jurisdiction investigation will be skipped as unnecessary. (Think of how 'Patent Trolls' always set their office up in East Texas because East Texas is all trolls and no inventive business, so they reward the trolls and steal the money from the inventive businesses. Jurisdiction shopping is the norm, where it is permitted it is used.)
And the NSA uses the FBI as the way to skip domestic surveillance limits, technically the FBI asks for the warrants and uses NSA facilities as the technical means to implement the surveillance. NSA grabs all the data it can on the warrant (bulk content and metadata), keeps it all, gives FBI a search interface to it, and that's one of the ways they get around US law. FBI puts domestic stuff in the same database.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140630/12101627734/fbi-cia-also-make-use-backdoor-searches-nsa-data-to-access-us-communications-without-warrant.shtml
"Moreover, because the FBI stores Section 702 collection in the same database as its "traditional" FISA collection, a query of "traditional" FISA collection will also query Section 702 collection. In addition, the FBI routinely conducts queries across its databases in an effort to locate relevant information that is already in its possession when it opens new national security investigations and assessments. Therefore, the FBI believes the number of queries is substantial."
See how that works? Any protections for your US data are as gone as for Brits, being spied on by GCHQ for the NSA!
I mean, you people vote for this stuff. What exactly is the complaint? Is this some kind of act, or are you all really that nuts? Are you actually going to surrender to Hillary or whoever the TV tells you? You are sick!
Lets put aside the ethics and legalities of what the FBI is proposing to do. Now it seems like this enables tricksters to engage in much larger scale abuse. Trick the FBI to hack Foreign government networks, infrastructure and companies (and get caught, since they are presumably not currently as good at it as the NSA). After all, they no longer need to do their due dilligence before cracking into aunt Bettie's IoT connected iron lung if her state owned ISP issued her an insecure router. Lets use an exploit to hardware reset that microcontroller, nothing could possibly go wrong, could it?
For all involved. Defense attorneys, judges, the appellate division, enforcement departments, prosecutors all the way up to the Supreme Court. All in all, when it finally makes its way to the highest court how much will have been spent? $400 to $500 million will have been spent.
Sad thing is, it only gets tested when the target has enough balls and income to make the prosecutors try the case.
justice isn't free
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
of this is copyright law. Remember how Prenda Law lost so many cases because they couldn't prove who was in and out of a particular legal district? Poof, problem solved. Check for MPAA/RIAA donors.
We are the 198 proof..
Nobody cares anymore.
The Constitution only requires that a judge issue a warrant, not that the issuing judge be nearby. That's a procedural leftover from the pre-telecoms era.
What a future you all have.
I'm going to pop some popcorn and sit back and watch the show.
I'm sure foriegn nations will be watching...and waiting with arrest warrants when agents go on holiday.
I don't see how this will pass muster on constitutionality, but SCOTUS doesn't seem to care about such things.
FTA... The Supreme Court would have until May 1, 2016 to review and accept the amendment, which Congress would then have seven months to reject, modify or defer. Absent any congressional action, the rule would take place on Dec. 1, 2016.
So SCOTUS has to review and accept, and Congress just has to do nothing, during an election year, and then this the rule goes into effect. Yup! I feel boned!
If it exists, there's the ability of the government to perform widescale surveillance of it.
Which makes for interesting juris-my-diction fights when a single threat comprises both domestic and foreign elements.
Then how is this different?
The U.S. government has power "to regulate commerce [...] among the several states" and to enforce copyrights on its soil. If this requires states to give "full faith and credit" to other states' efforts to track down a server used in interstate commerce, in an activity that competes with interstate commerce (Wickard v. Filburn), or in trafficking in copyrighted works, warrants that cross state lines might be necessary.
Now the FBI can shop for the most friendly judges wherever they may be in the United States and get warrants that no judge having jurisdiction would ever grant.