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Federal Court: The Fourth Amendment Does Not Protect Your Home Computer (eff.org)
An anonymous reader writes: The EFF reports that a federal court in Virginia today ruled that a criminal defendant has no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in his personal computer (PDF), located inside his home. The court says the federal government does not need a warrant to hack into an individual's computer. EFF reports: "The implications for the decision, if upheld, are staggering: law enforcement would be free to remotely search and seize information from your computer, without a warrant, without probable cause, or without any suspicion at all. To say the least, the decision is bad news for privacy. But it's also incorrect as a matter of law, and we expect there is little chance it would hold up on appeal. (It also was not the central component of the judge's decision, which also diminishes the likelihood that it will become reliable precedent.) But the decision underscores a broader trend in these cases: courts across the country, faced with unfamiliar technology and unsympathetic defendants, are issuing decisions that threaten everyone's rights.
Encrypt all the files!!!
No exceptions.
Full Scale Assault on personal liberties.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Franklin
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
and therefore, it needs super extra protection. Its forbidden to open someone's skull to look for info as well, as should be the analogon for computers.
We ransack all of their personal computers.
We don't need a warrant.
Stop calling it a PC. George Orwell should get credit for naming this surveillance tool.
This was an open-and-shut search with a warrant, arising out of the FBI running a kiddie porn site after taking control of it. The warrant authorized the deployment of malware disguised to look like kiddie porn that, when opened, would cause the target's machine to identify its IP address, operating system, etc. This was then followed by a search warrant for the residence, during which the computers were confiscated and their contents searched. That search was covered under the residential search warrant, so no additional warrant was needed to search the contents of the machine that was confiscated.
The defendant has no prayer unless he can show reasonable cause for the jury to believe that someone else was using or controlling the computer in question at the time, or unless he can convince the judge to throw out the warrant based on the investigative technique itself being illegal in some way (fruit of the poisonous tree).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It should be pretty simple: Would it be illegal for an ordinary citizen to do something? If the answer is yes, you need a warrant.
So, if an investigation involves going to somebody's webpage, that doesn't require a warrant. If the investigation involves compromising a computer - brute force password crack, sneaking in and installing a keylogger, utilizing a zero day exploit - you need a warrant.
I don't read AC A human right
No, they didn't. The court ruled that there was a warrant, but even if there hadn't been, there was no need for one, since there was no expectation of privacy on an Internet-connected computer. See the section starting at the bottom of page 47.
Impeachment, probably.
The real problem, I think, is that a lot of older judges just don't understand technology. Now, that doesn't mean it was the case here, certainly (I have no idea who the judge was), but judges like the one in the Oracle vs Google trial, who took the time to learn to code in Java just to understand what was going on, are few and far between. There's probably a lot more older ones who are about as computer savvy as your parents or grandparents, who think computers are for Facebook and cat pictures. They don't understand that when the Founding Fathers were talking about the privacy of one's personal letters and effects, those EXACT things are today stored on your computer and your phone. Almost nobody has a locked drawer full of paper documents anymore, it's all electronic, and on your computer (well, hopefully you store it locally, rather than in the cloud). It absolutely should be protected.
The court argues that since "computer hacking is more prevalent than it was even nine years ago" the defendant has no expectation of privacy to the contents of his own machine.
This is like arguing the content of a person's wallet is not private because of the existence of pick-pockets.
This is insanity.
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BMO