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Supreme Court Gives FBI More Hacking Power (theintercept.com)
An anonymous reader cites an article on The Intercept (edited and condensed): The Supreme Court on Thursday approved changes that would make it easier for the FBI to hack into computers, many of them belonging to victims of cybercrime. The changes, which will take immediate effect in December unless Congress adopts competing legislation, would allow the FBI go hunting for anyone browsing the Internet anonymously in the U.S. with a single warrant. Previously, under the federal rules on criminal procedures, a magistrate judge couldn't approve a warrant request to search a computer remotely if the investigator didn't know where the computer was -- because it might be outside his or her jurisdiction. The rule change would allow a magistrate judge to issue a warrant to search or seize an electronic device if the target is using anonymity software like Tor."Unbelievable," said Edward Snowden. "FBI sneaks radical expansion of power through courts, avoiding public debate." Ahmed Ghappour, a visiting professor at University of California Hastings Law School, has described it as "possibly the broadest expansion of extraterritorial surveillance power since the FBI's inception."
Journalism.
...because apparently most people just don't get it.
You wanted big government? THIS IS IT.
Stated another way, you can't have big government without gross violations of civil rights. It's absolutely impossible. The only way to eliminate those gross violations of civil rights is to place strict limits on the size and scope of government, which naturally rules out the notion of big government.
Crap like this is why they wanted him out of the way.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
welcome our web browser monitoring overlords and wish them well in their endeavors at world domination.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
This seems to be the only reasonable outcome although I'm sure the conspiracy theorists will have a heyday with it. If somebody has effectively disguised the physical location of their machine, there's no way to know which jurisdiction should issue the warrant. This creates a Catch-22 situation that is untenable. The only reason to consider this problematic is if you are of the belief that those with a certain level of technical skill should be exempt from the law.
what about that suicide at apple did that person help the FBI and then apple found out they pushed him over the edge?
Better send in mulder and scully
"search or seize an electronic device if the target is using anonymity software like Tor"
They basically ruled that using the Tor Browser or any anonymity software is an admission you must be doing something wrong so therefore the warrant covers it all.
What is innocent until proven guilty?
"immediate effect in December"
Either the effect is immediate (this means NOW) or in December (which means later). What is the English language?
This is not unreasonable. The government should not be required to get 51 warrants, simply because they don't know which state or federal territory a criminal is in. Merely getting one warrant is appropriate.
This is about principle, not merely handcuffing the government.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
>> "FBI sneaks radical expansion of power through courts, avoiding public debate."
This is the same route that everyone is pursuing today. Witness the recent changes in gay marriage (court decision), our new national health care "tax" (court decision), political speech contribution limits (court decision) and more.
It's getting to the point where "public debate" leading to "legislation" or "constitutional amendments" (i.e., changes in the law) almost seems like a thing of the past. Instead, you just stack the highest court you can find with like-minded people, then shove court cases involving your favorite issues at them until they issue the ruling you want - no messy democracy needed!
"Unbelievable"
What have we done without it?
Achille Talon
Hop!
"but here, FBI, have more of it."
'Oh yeah' says FBI, 'that's the stuff!'
HACKING POWER.
So which is it article?.. anyone browsing the internet anonymously?.. or targets of an ongoing investigation who are browsing the internet anonymously? Nonetheless, with the ineptitude of some certain lawmakers, until the entire internet is a target we may continue to see these kind of things pushed for approval.
How can the Supreme Court make laws ? That is a job of the legislature !!!!
Let's be clear what the rule change actually does. It allows a judge to issue a search warrant affecting computers outside his or her jurisdiction.
The rule only allows an expansion in the geographic scope of warrants. It is NOT an order permitting the hacking of anyone using anonymity. That's a very misleading statement.
I'm actually not sure this is a bad thing, either. Instead of seeking warrants in each jurisdiction, it allows law enforcement to seek a single warrant that covers all jurisdictions. One of the biggest issues with government surveillance is that the courts just don't have the resources to properly scrutinize all the requests for warrants they get. For example, the FISA court can't properly review all the requests they get, so in some ways they rely on the NSA to police themselves. If there are fewer requests for warrants it allows, at least in principle, more thorough scrutiny of each request.
Could someone please explain to me exactly what the Supreme Court does? I didn't even know that they do this kind of thing. I thought they heard cases and made rulings on the cases.
Reading the Wikipedia article on the US Supreme Court doesn't help, either. It's all about hearing cases.
... is "the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant and receipt on the person whose property was searched or who possessed the information that was seized or copied. Service may be accomplished by any means, including electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person." So after they search your machine and identify you, they still have to let you know they did it. If it happens too often, voters might start to care. Of course, the cameras everywhere one turns don't seem to bother voters much, so perhaps that's a bit optimistic.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
FBI now does not need NSA or CIA, good for them. Will the FISA court be rubber stamping the warrants next?
BULLSHIT. Scalia was no great defender of privacy.
I know the CIA has this specific mandate, but now the FBI can (in error, perhaps?), commit acts of war against a foreign state? Or be easily goaded into doing just that? All it takes is one agent not knowing where whatever they're attacking is really located.
This is beyond fucked up. The FBI is not prepared for this, the CIA is.
Pablo Ramirez is a drug dealer and pedophile who resides in Santa Cruz do Sul city at Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He intends to run away to another country or state. I don't care, I wish that nazi retard that he is very dead along with Helena and Samanta selling children, very away from me. Seriously, today I'm walking armed, because if I spor this retard using makeup again, I'll shot the fat bastard. And the girls too, I don't like them either, child rapists motherfuckers.
Clinton is a square shooter
We have a full on police state, our "democracy" is a farce as demonstrated by super delagates and vast political corruption, and the middle class is a sliver of the population versus what it used to be. My kids will have it worse as things have been steadily declining for decades. We are past due for a major change / revolution. This monopoly game is about over strongly and suspect that in my lifetime I will get to see the next game. Hopefully the transition is relatively peaceful.
This sounds like a direct response to the recent ruling covered here a few days ago:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/04/21/1718230/in-a-first-judge-throws-out-evidence-obtained-from-fbi-malware
"Based on the foregoing analysis, the Court concludes that the NIT warrant was issued without jurisdiction and thus was void ab initio,"
And now:
"Previously, under the federal rules on criminal procedures, a magistrate judge couldn't approve a warrant request to search a computer remotely if the investigator didn't know where the computer was -- because it might be outside his or her jurisdiction."
Would be nice to hear from a lawyer if the previous ruling was taken to the supreme court and amended based on... no clue, but some legal reason.
That's just some crazy conspiracy theory.
Anywhere the FBI is involved, you can rest assured they tossed him off the roof themselves.
Yes, even if he was about to commit suicide.
Shit like this turns those creepers on.
The changes, which would allow the FBI go hunting for anyone browsing the Internet anonymously in the U.S. with a single warrant, are already raising concerns among privacy advocates who have been closely following the issue.
The Intercept is shit.
1. Federal district judges have the jurisdiction and power to issue the kind of warrants that the FBI sought from a federal magistrate judge. So why not get the warrant from a district judge? Well, because the function of magistrate judges is to lessen the workload of district courts by handling routine administrative court procedures like signing off on warrants. The same rules for obtaining warrants are applied whether the FBI gets the warrant from a federal district judge or a federal magistrate judge. This is not some "broad expansion of extraterritorial surveillance" since this power already resided with district court judges. This is a ministerial rule change which allows warrants covering computer crimes to remain ministerial.
2. The warrants still have to be obtained in a district where a system involved in a crime resides. A federal magistrate judge in a California district court can't issue a warrant for the FBI who is hosting a honeypot system located in Connecticut.
3. Search warrants for physical locations still have to be individually issued for every suspect regardless if the suspect resides outside the jurisdiction of court. Again, federal district judges already could issue a search warrant for locations outside of its jurisdiction. The rule change allows federal magistrate judges to do the same which, once again, is for the purpose of relieving the workload on the district courts.
This is the rule change.
6 FEDERAL RULES OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
Rule 41. Search and Seizure
* * * * *
(b) Venue for a Warrant Application. At the request of
a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for
the government:
* * * * *
(6) a magistrate judge with authority in any district
where activities related to a crime may have
occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use
remote access to search electronic storage media
and to seize or copy electronically stored
information located within or outside that district
if:
(A) the district where the media or information
is located has been concealed through
technological means; or
(B) in an investigation of a violation of
18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(5), the media are
protected computers that have been
damaged without authorization and are
located in five or more districts.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/did-fbi-pay-university-attack-tor-users
The Tor project themselves say that the FBI can investigate users and that Tor stands ready to assist the FBI in doing so.
Unlike a lot of folks here I actually like the FBI but ultimately they're people, people are lazy and the FBI was being very lazy when they pursued this. Of course they don't see it that way -- they see it as trying to maximize the return on budget dollars over the long term.
Judge Dredd would be extremely cost effective too, but the US constitution was written to forbid both scenarios.
A fun experiment might be to use just a dumb terminal and have all the processing out on an Amazon AWS server somewhere. I wonder if the FBI would have the guts to bust into one of their server farms and rip out some of the boxes/blades/hard drives.
Parent is wrong.
1) power appeals to "bad people" in all amounts - sociopaths get their kicks from child abuse to middle management to serial killing.
2) The SYSTEM eventually influences everybody; even physiology experts who design the experiments - as the science shows (ex: stanford prisoner experiment.) The greatest influence of all are the bad elements within the system itself - they do not need to be human or be planned to be corrupting to be highly potent.
3) "Good people" as well as normal people are prone to being corrupted by others; again, science shows this (ex Milgram experiment.)
4) good vs bad is for USA comics and movies. Simpleton thinking for easy manipulation of the story... and probably the consumers who are surrounded with it. What is good and bad is complex and quite subjective. A good person with the right motives can easily place lower priority values aside for the greater good, or even just for self defense. Self defense itself is a great topic for debate because it is arguably the most evil defense there is. THINK ABOUT THAT!
5) what is bad? what is evil? We don't really learn about them; we only hear examples or have simple rules. Nobody spends time trying to define them let alone studying them. Nationalism and other limited perspectives become a huge complicating factor. The nature of Evil is something that we should all spend time on; it is extremely important but we don't study it - psychology hardly does so because it's always getting stuck in niches.
capcha: crusade
Unacceptable.
What kind of people are they appointing to SCOTUS these days? It seems that this bunch of legal illiterates doesn't even understand the meaning of jurisdiction .
A judge can't authorize the search or seizure of something that is outside of their jurisdiction, because they have no authority to grant it outside of their jurisdiction. Jurisdiction means area of legal authority. The court can't give the FBI legal authority to do something in a place where the court has no legal authority itself. It can't give something that it doesn't have.
If lack of jurisdiction were no barrier then the judges of North Korea or Iran would be able to authorize whatever they liked within the territory of the United States. Is SCOTUS OK with that?
The fbi used to be someone to look up to. Now they cant get any lower.
Actually he was...provided it had nothing to do with drugs. He had a bad legal blind spot when it came to controlled substances... I think he was afraid some day they were gonna try to reinstate alcohol prohibition?
FBI HQ is still named after that tyrant J Edgar Hoover, who gathered so much power, even Presidents feared him.
The FBI hasn't changed; they will never change.
The FBI does not have any power to enact laws, only enforce them.
The Supreme Court does not have any power to enact laws, only to pass judgement affirming or overturning them.
Whichever law it is, which the summary viciously fails to mention, was signed into law by an elected leader. Stop lying to the public to try and promote Snowden's lies and continued assault on the American people. He is a traitor to the USA and the sooner a bullet is put through his head, the better,
Looked up to? Only if you fell for their propaganda. The stuff the Bureau did that didn't make the news, the stuff that was hidden from view would more than likely curdle your blood.
rig things so that if the gateway/router falls over a shaped charge blows the connect "they" could have more money than the Atlantian Greek and Roman Pantheons and still not get any data.
when things like this can go through with no public debate, can we call what we have in the USA a democracy any more? Sounds very Nazi/Gestapo like indeed:Group/agency just secretly arranges expandability of it's own powers with no oversight, no limits of scope, and no accountability. Sounds more like fasicism to me. At least China and Russia are open about it. We tell the world we are a democracy, and do the stuff we condemned the Germans, Chinese and Russians for years ago. When will the US public realize they have a government (let's just say 'ruling group', 'government' sounds too much like the public actually has any say) that really has no accountability to the public. (When we allowed the Patriot Act to be passed behind closed doors with any significant opposition, we gave permission to all of this following). And with the information they collect, they can intimidate/eliminate anyone who opposes their agenda, which is likely part of the point. (just like in Russia and China).
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Isn't TOR designed to be anonymous?
How is it technically possible for the FBI to find and track a suspect user when that user is anonymous and could be anywhere and anybody?
Is TOR not anonymous anymore? How they be found and investigated if they are using TOR and could be anywhere in the world?
Do you have a better one? Can you point out some specific flaws in the methodology of that study? I note that a few other widely cited studies used the ICRG corruption index, what are your thoughts on that one?
I'd appreciate your thoughts on the subject, if you have any.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
*UPDATED* Scoring Table (must ensure they are dead before receiving any points):
POTUS - 200 points (NC)
NSA Agent - 150 points (NC)
FBI Agent - 125 points (+25)
Police / Military (general, award +50 FOR a General) - 100 points (NC)
Trump supporter - 50 (kill 5, receive +50)
I already do not recognize the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost all respect and support when they rulled they can tax a person for NOT having healthcare, even though the 16th Amendment says they can tax on forms of INCOME.
There is a separation of power, and the Supreme Court does not have the power to in effect make law. I do not recognize this decisions and real Americans will actively fight against them on any level. Obstructing by any means.
THIS is why you need encryption, this is why you should hide everything, even when it's not criminal to have.
Encrypt EVERYTHING.
This may make such hacking and searching of computers in the US legal but there is no way to tell where the computer actually is located.
Consider the implications for the individuals conducting the investigations. What if you access computers in other countries inadvertently or otherwise. Other countries will not accept the US jurisidiction over computers in their territories. I would be very nervous about using this power. All it takes is a alert defense attorney asking about other computers accessed using this warrant and there locations. Forcing you to answer unless the prosecutor is willing to drop case or not use the evidence. You could end with your own testimony being cited in an extradition request or being arrested while out of the country.
I don't know why this post was modded "Troll", when it was clearly meant to be Funny!
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The NSA found kiddie porn on this computer and we need a warrant to copy its contents but we don't know where it is. Thanks, your honour. Strange, all the files say "Airbus, Toulouse, France".
Cracking a computer is an offense, upto and including terrorism. How will the rest of the world react to the US DoJ committing state-sponsored terrorism?
... seize an electronic device ...
How are they going to seize it if they don't know where it is? Will this result in more 'Kim Dotcom' style, jack-booted policing?
C'mon fellow freedom lovers! FIGHT BACK!!! Get our lives OUT of the hands of paranoid government incompetents! I DEMAND FREEDOM! Freedom from any prying. Fix the REAL societal ills rather than chase them with patches. It is the CORPORATE manipulators that needs exposure - and full prosecution for their offenses. This crap cannot continue the way it is without a radical revolution to ensure our protection from a way of life that we do NOT want!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
'Future Shock' is here -- WAY too many "monkeys with machine guns"! How did this happen? How about CORPORATIONS focusing on that ever-almighty bottom line? Sell Sell Sell - EVERYONE, whether they need it or want it or not.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Encryption and false IP creation will become the norm now on this .... Development of IP hiding software that gives a false IP address and gateway will end this noise. And the software currently exists !!! FBI be damned.