FBI Tried To Defeat Encryption 10 Years Ago, Files Show (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a NYTimes article: In early 2003, F.B.I. agents hit a roadblock in a secret investigation, called Operation Trail Mix. For months, agents had been intercepting phone calls and emails belonging to members of an animal welfare group that was believed to be sabotaging operations of a company that was using animals to test drugs. But encryption software had made the emails unreadable. So investigators tried something new. They persuaded a judge to let them remotely, and secretly, install software on the group's computers to help get around the encryption. That effort, revealed in newly declassified and released records, shows in new detail how F.B.I. hackers worked to defeat encryption more than a decade before the agency's recent fight with Apple over access to a locked iPhone. The Trail Mix case was, in some ways, a precursor to the Apple dispute. In both cases, the agents could not decode the data themselves, but found a clever workaround. The Trail Mix records also reveal what is believed to be the first example of the F.B.I. remotely installing surveillance software, known as spyware or malware, as part of a criminal wiretap. 'This was the first time that the Department of Justice had ever approved such an intercept of this type,' an F.B.I. agent wrote in a 2005 document summing up the case.

Comments

Re:This isn't "getting around the encryption"

[fustakrakich]

"legal process" = rubber stamp

Re:Partial credit

[Registered Coward v2]

Had the FBI actually not broken numerous laws I may agree with you. The FBI installing illegal software without the person's knowledge is a bit different from wiretapping.

They had a warrant to install the software so it no different than a wiretap other than the point of collection.

First, the only way for the FBI to have this illegal software would be to create the software which is a criminal act. Alternatively, and more likely, they could have conspired with criminals to acquire the software. (It should be obvious that "criminals" could be agencies within Government(s).)

Data and keystroke logging software is not illegal, nor is creating such software. Software to report the results of such activity is not illegal either.

Simply put, your assertions of illegal and criminal activity is incorrect.