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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.
Is available to the Chinese
and it doesn't end with "and they lived happily ever after".
It depends on who can be found to enter a computer network?
Another group could be used as a cut out to act as an internet agent provocateur.
A charismatic leader in a chatroom could be anyone who has a suggestion. The data ends up with gov handlers who turned or created the "group" used.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
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!
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?
You know when you hear about some nefarious plan in North Korea that threatens the US, or how Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems to attack you? That's what this sounds like to the rest of the world. It's basically saying that the US is developing and deploying cyber weapons at every level, and of course we can expect them to be used against us.
I would say that the US is now as bad as China, but actually it's been far worse for a long time due to having more resources and openly and actively attacking other nations. It declared war long ago and companies like Sony getting hacked are just the latest casualties.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, if it's another country, the FBI shouldn't be there at all. Ever.
That's what the CIA is for.
The FBI's bailiwick is domestic threats.
The CIA covers foreign threats.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!