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.

Comments

WTF?

[Jane Q. Public]

A judge's jurisdiction is a judge's jurisdiction. Attempting to change that would change our entire legal system. Just no.

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.

Re:WTF?

[Nyder]

The people who wrote the Constitution couldn't imagine the technology we have today, therefore the Constitution doesn't apply anymore. Q.E.D.

Nope, not how it works.

Jurisdiction shopping

[Anonymous Coward]

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!