Unsealed Court Docs Show FBI Used Malware Like 'A Grenade' (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In 2013, the FBI received permission to hack over 300 specific users of dark web email service TorMail. But now, after the warrants and their applications have finally been unsealed, experts say the agency illegally went further, and hacked perfectly legitimate users of the privacy-focused service. "That is, while the warrant authorized hacking with a scalpel, the FBI delivered their malware to TorMail users with a grenade," Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in an email. The move comes after the ACLU pushed to unseal the case dockets in September. The Department of Justice recently decided to publish redacted versions of related documents. In 2013, the FBI seized Freedom Hosting, a service that hosted dark web sites, including a large number of child pornography sites and the privacy-focused email service TorMail. The agency then went on to deploy a network investigative technique (NIT) -- a piece of malware -- designed to obtain the real IP address of those visiting Freedom Hosting sites. According to the new documents, the NIT was used against users of 23 separate websites. As for TorMail, officials have maintained that the government obtained a warrant to deploy the NIT against specific users of the service. Now, we do know that to be true: recently unsealed affidavits include a total of over 300 redacted TorMail accounts that the FBI wanted to target. All of these accounts were allegedly linked to child pornography-related crimes, according to court documents. Importantly, the affidavits say that the NIT would only be used to "investigate any user who logs into any of the TARGET ACCOUNTS by entering a username and password." But, according to sources who used TorMail and previous reporting, the NIT was deployed before the TorMail login page was even displayed, raising the question of how the FBI could have possibly targeted specific accounts.

Comments

It's time to clean house

[Anonymous Coward]

From the director to the janitors, the FBI needs to be cleaned up. It's gotten to a point where J. Edgar is looking like a boy scout.

Re:It's time to clean house

[drinkypoo]

We can't clean house without cleaning the House. Tomorrow is our big chance to squander the opportunity. Since we can expect to see at least 95% of the same old faces, don't hold out any hope for any changes in the FBI, or any other part of the government. The election is the nation's reflection. Not exactly pretty, is it?

I was hardly offered anything other than Rs and Ds in general, so substantive change is miles away in any case from my perspective.

I see what happened here.

[SuricouRaven]

FBI: We want to hack a ton of computers belonging to people who are probably innocent.
Judge: Sorry, I can't issue a warrant for that.
FBI: We need to do this in order to catch monsters who sexually abuse children.
Judge: Fucking scum like that have no rights! You have my warrant, do whatever it takes!

Re:Why is the government using malware at all?

[BlueStrat]

Do you have to pile anarchist shit on everything?

Wanting a government that obeys it's constitution and it's laws is "anarchist shit"? Just...wow. Extreme, much?

Yes your enemy built your roads, supplies clean water and...

Wrong. Government builds nothing, buys nothing, sells nothing, and owns nothing. The people do, have, and own all that. Those things you mention were all done by the people despite government greed, incompetence, corruption, cronyism, and general ham-handedness, not because of it. Government makes laws, collects taxes, and directs large armed men to imprison, kill, and/or destroy enemies of the nation and lawbreakers. That is all.

Guns won't free you.

Guns have freed every people who have thrown off a government since guns became widespread. Of course, guns alone won't overthrow a government but they are essential when it does become necessary. They also act as a deterrent to overreaching authority attempting to go too far. As the warning WW2 Japan's Emperor received from his generals regarding a possibly invasion of the US and being met with 'a rifle behind every window...and blade of grass' demonstrates, they are also a deterrent to foreign aggression and thus prevent war and promote peace.

If you want to ban guns change the Constitution, there's a procedure in it to do that. By using the sort of tactics that have been employed to 'end-run' around 2nd Amendment protections, you legitimize the very same tactics being used against other Amendments, some of which you may actually care about.

Strat