In a First, Judge Throws Out Evidence Obtained from FBI Malware (vice.com)

An anonymous reader cites an article on Motherboard: For the first time, a judge has thrown out evidence obtained via a piece of FBI malware. The move comes from a cased affected by the FBI's seizure of a dark web child pornography site in February 2015, and the subsequent deployment of a network investigative technique (NIT) -- the agency's term for a hacking tool -- in order to identify the site's visitors. "Based on the foregoing analysis, the Court concludes that the NIT warrant was issued without jurisdiction and thus was void ab initio," Judge William G. Young of the District of Massachusetts writes in an order. "It follows that the resulting search was conducted as though there were no warrant at all. Since warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable, and the good-faith exception is inapplicable, the evidence must be excluded," it continues. Young's order came in response to a motion to suppress from the lawyers of Alex Levin, who was arrested as part of the investigation into the child pornography site Playpen. After seizing the site, the FBI ran Playpen from a government facility from February 20 to March 4, 2015, and used a NIT to obtain over a thousand IP addresses for US-based users of the site, and at least 3000 for users abroad, according to Motherboard's investigations.

Comments

Re:Mixed Feelings

[Anonymous Coward]

Trafficking CP is a made up thing.
It doesn't harm children any more than death pics harm dead people.
The kid doesn't know who is fapping to it.
The only people actually harming anyone are the sick fucks actually making and selling this shit, and that's who they should be going after.

Re:Mixed Feelings

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I was of the understanding that the issue was that demand for child porn would mean more of it gets made, i.e. children being sexually abused. At least that was the defense for drawings of child porn being made legal. (I don't recall if that ever succeeded.)