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FBI To Gain Expanded Hacking Powers as Senate Effort To Block Fails (reuters.com)
A last-ditch effort in the Senate to block or delay rule changes that would expand the U.S. government's hacking powers failed Wednesday, despite concerns the changes would jeopardize the privacy rights of innocent Americans and risk possible abuse by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. Reuters adds: Democratic Senator Ron Wyden attempted three times to delay the changes which, will take effect on Thursday and allow U.S. judges will be able to issue search warrants that give the FBI the authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction, potentially even overseas. His efforts were blocked by Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate's second-ranking Republican. The changes will allow judges to issue warrants in cases when a suspect uses anonymizing technology to conceal the location of his or her computer or for an investigation into a network of hacked or infected computers, such as a botnet.
Can the government just ban encryption already?
And do we really need HTTPS ?
The FBI's hacking would be easier if all systems were required to have a special port with a telnetd root shell running, exclusively for the FBI's use, of course.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Agenda... Hmm.....
Bear this in mind: A Democrat tried to block the FBI from hacking any computer anywhere and a Republican tried to stop it.
And yes, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has been opposing this snooping since he entered the Senate in 1996, so no, it doesn't have anything to do with Donald Trump or President Obama.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They generally pass a law like this after they have started the action.
Who is msmash/manish? He/she seems to have an agenda?
Take note of who voted for, and against, this.
I haven't seen a posting yet of the entire list, but in addition to the two named in the summary, Chris Coons (D-Delaware) and Steve Maines (R-Montana) are also noted in TFA as voicing opposition.
On the one hand this of course sounds bad for all the obvious reasons slashdot has focused on over the many many years. On the other hand however, better they are honest with the public about the torture and hacking they were going to be doing regardless of what their laws said.
"jeopardize the privacy rights of innocent Americans and risk possible abuse by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump"
But it was just passed by the current administration. So the ones that want to "jeopardize the privacy rights" would be the current administration. But now the current administration will cry foul. But if their person won they would most likely just let this pass with no issues and not said a word.
Until the first batch of senators, congress critters, or other high officials or combination thereof suddenly gets thier dirt exposed and leaked via the FBI.
Democrats thought it would be nice for Hillary to have this - otherwise the bill would not exist.
I guess they don't like the other guy getting their toys.
There is a rule that says "do to others what you want them to do to you". So because politicians don't believe in such a thing, the average citizen is going to be harmed by this.
Never re-elect anyone.
The last well-publicised time that the FBI needed to hack something that they called up the Mossad[Celebrite] to do them a solid.
Now that we are BFF's with Putin they'll just ask the FSB I guess.
Yes, this is a big privacy blow. Probably the biggest in quite some time. Maybe the largest since the Patriot Act. And yes, there will be little outcry because most people don't even know or care what this means. But what will no doubt happen is the fed will shop around until they find the judge who grant them every warrant they want. Which they will no doubt find several if not more. This should be called, "Just Grant My Damned Warrant"
If the FBI is now a republican proxy, how will the Democrats make plans?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
As a European, I honestly don't know the details of FBI's hacking powers and the intricacies aren't that interesting I think, not for me anyway, however simply assuming that FBI hacks computers outside USA, being a member of a warring faction makes them as threatening as enemy combatants, in theory anyway. Hacking powers is not cool, instead I find it to be terrible.
I have already listed USA (the state) as a terrorist organization, in my head anyway, and I guess adding FBI to that list doesn't really change much. USA share the list with UK, and well, basically any warring faction including my own country. I am a civilian ofc. It is bad enough that local police was recently armed. Not entirely sure why that happened. Would not surprise me if that was because of the current right wing politicians being in power atm in my area.
As for armed police, I think the personal firearms are just there to protect themselves, not so much the public. And weapons they had anyway, before the policemen started patrolling with weapons on their hips.
I've always wondered if you have a right to defend yourself, if being attacked by an army. Does anyone know?
Imagine if you took a walk in some conflict area, you round a corner, and you get injured by a gunshot, either far away or close up, for no reason. Do you have a right to defend yourself if you can?
Please re-submit news article describing legislation going into effect without clumsily trying to re-cast it as a Donald Trump issue. I hope everyone can see how banal it is. So if Hillary had won, these Orwellian rule changes would have triggered chirping bluebirds instead?? People will tire soon of the press finding new ways to take the 'passive' out of passive-aggressive.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
All three branches of the government have failed to do their jobs.
Despite what any agency or congress or the courts say, the "laws" they pass are still subordinate to the U.S. Constitution. No "law" has the power to override it.
I encrypt the hell out of everything and I will never change that practice. If government wants the data, they must obtain a true warrant and I will decrypt it for them.
What about that fresh Firefox exploit being used against TOR users? I can understand it's practical use, but the second it's public the game is up and users should be informed.
Just thought I would point that out to any passing FBI operative who thinks that they can go interfering with remote devices without considering international borders.
You may just find yourself falling foul of international treaties initiated by your own government that class this sort of action as cyber-warfare. I just hope the government above the target of your hack is understanding and decides not to retaliate with physical force to your electronic attack.
I for one would find it an interesting exercise in jurisprudence for the FBI to be indicted in a foreign court for cyberwarfare.
Thank goodness that Obama is still president and can veto this change. Or perhaps he never signed it into law and the author of the story is incorrect? Obama would never have authorized this. This is horrible. So we can safely assume Obama will have a chance to veto this before it gets passed. Before those damn rethuglicans get into power and ram it through.
Thanks Obama! Thanks Democrats!
So it would not be unreasonable for any other government in the world to do the same. All computers in the USA are fair game to every other country's government. Completely legal.
Keep blaming Trump for things that haven't even happened nor did he have anything to do with. We seen what that fear monger lead to in Clinton's election.
I didn't even vote for the guy and my first reaction when he took Florida was "My Gawd! Can Emmanuel Goldstein really get elected president?!?!"
The Two-Minute Hate approach to political dickering fell flat on its face and you're really trying more of the same? LOLzzz!
Thank gawd I use OpenBSD and host my own web, email, and cloud services. Let the FBI give it a go against one of (if not the) most secure operating systems out there.
They could have read it right off your keyboard anyway. By far the easiest place to monitor communications is at the unencrypted endpoints. If you don't want anyone to know what you're thinking, don't say it, don't enter it into a computer in any form, and don't write it down. That'll protect you. For at least a little while longer, anyway.
"Two people can keep a secret -- if one of them is dead."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Arguments of the form:
A's assertion: "Joe never kicked the dog"
B's response: "Larry did so kick the dog!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The law will be signed by President Barack Obama — who vastly expanded government's surveillance over his 8 years. So stop blaming Trump for it, uhm'k?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I think what our courts would (eventually) say is that the constitution doesn't protect anyone, or anything, outside of the USA itself, and so no warrant is required in the first place.
That's pretty much the entire basis our CIA was built upon.
I'm not saying this is a good outlook; but I am saying it is the outlook.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You, guys, wanted the President to be a dictator as far back as 2010! So he could "do a lot of things quickly".
The law being discussed will be signed by Obama. Whom you elected.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Can someone please stop msmash submitting all this radical left wing fact-lite anti-Trump propaganda FUD.
ok ....you asked for it....do go buy some board games cause you are all about to feel the brunt of how sad and stupid your govt is
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All of you. You chose to keep this fucky Congress. You chose to make things worse for us all. And you still won't acknowledge you did anything wrong, just like your leader.
Our founding fathers didn't have a key to enter anyone's backdoor in their houses. They saw it as abuse for law enforcement and if anyone gets it, suddenly anyone can enter your house.
I wish you people would be as concerned about the *actual* abuses by the Obama administration as you are about the *possible* abuses by the Trump administration.
Do you have ESP?
All this change does is allow magistrate judges to issue warrants that allow the use of NIT to cover computers that fall outside of the geographical boundary of the court jurisdiction they belong to. Federal judges already can issue such warrants, and the FBI is NOT gaining any expansion of its surveillance authority. This is a purely administrative change to allow magistrate judges to do the job they are meant to do: to handle the mundane duties of the federal judiciary like warrant issuances.
What kind of ignoramus are you?! This is /. There has been a vehement, sustained and consistent stream of protests about privacy incursions for years!!!
Trying to make this a partisan issue is just stupid. If you choose to make yourself look stupid, don't attempt to blame anyone else. That's you bub, 100% on you. Do you like the look of the stupid hat!?
Bear this in mind: A Democrat tried to block the FBI from hacking any computer anywhere and a Republican tried to stop it.
And yes, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has been opposing this snooping since he entered the Senate in 1996, so no, it doesn't have anything to do with Donald Trump or President Obama.
Yep.
Taking $60 million from down-ballot campaigns and giving it to the Clinton campaign so she could defeat Bernie Sanders doesn't seem like such a good move now, does it?
The fuck? You mean the current administration is a champion for our privacy?
Short version: This is the US version of the 'snooper's charter' that has become law in Australia and the UK.
The USA has claimed they own the internet for some time now and no-one's denied it. This is a logical journey down a slippery slope: Doubly so, if one thinks the USA should be the world police.
He's been against this crap when Clinton, Feinstein, Boxer, Obama, and others were all pushing or aquiescing to it as well!
I really wish he was a Senator for my District because at least on tech issues and privacy he's on the same page I am.
Related: Now that the FBI has broad ranging support for hacking anyone, how long do you think it will be until we find out about Trustzone/TPM/Management Engine/SEE hardware, and the assorted chains of 'untrustworthy' firmware being used to carte blanche hack everyone's system who wasn't smart enough to hold onto older hardware, ensuring that all session keys for each hop of your 'anonymized' connection have been compromised, in addition to the capability to hack your system to uncover your identity so they can punish you for your 'wrongdoing' (whether made up or not!)
Society domestic and abroad has reached a truly dark point in our history, and not because of Trump (he's a symptom, not the cause sheeple!) but because people calling the shots at the extra-governmental level have all the pieces in play to allow takeover/enslavement of society, not through physical shackles as in the past, but through blackmail on a scale the elites of past generations could only have dreamed of. Getting out before the yoke is firmly lodged against our shoulders will be hard, but if you want any hope for yourselves, or even worse, your children, now is the time to act. We need legislature advocates, hardware designers/manufacturers and funders, people willing to pay more for secure and user controlled hardware (but not the 40-400x markup most current offerings have over the equivalent consumer systems!) If you can, avoid for-profit entities, if you can't, ensure the corporate charter is created to keep them independent, puts production above shareholders, and is funded entirely by sources without strings attached (except to produce hardware returning freedom back to the owner/user!)
Liberty has always been a facade promised to use by our 'betters', but as of late the facade is wearing thin and the fascism and authoritarianism is once again rubbing through. Now is the time to scrape that underlying foundation away and replace it with the panelling of true liberty, not a cheaply made imitation.
This is par for the course. Liberals fight censorship, fight for transparency and fight for accountable government and run up less government debt. Conservatives fight for authoritarian government policies, promote secrecy and run up a lot of government debt. Ignore their lips, pay attention to their historical actions
The problem is not everybody is getting a state they deserve. Some people didn't give up the fight for freedom and are working toward fixing these sorts of problems. If you are like me and willing to take a stand there are options. The solution to these sorts of problems is multifaceted. They involve both social and technical aspects and everybody can participate whether or not one is a technical individual or not. However simple the solutions there is no short-term fix.
People who aren't blind sided by those who want a totalitarian state are rare and spread out across the US and around the world. There is no significant population anywhere that has any chance at having a significant impact on curtailing government. The masses are simply too easily swayed. This leaves those who want freedom, privacy, and a little liberty with few options.
There is at this point only one actual and successful migration movement in existence that isn't a joke. The Free State Project has successfully signed up 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire for the purpose of pursuing liberty and freedom in our life time. 10% of signers have already moved and it's only been six months since people were suppose to start moving. People who signed agreed to move within 5 years of hitting 20,000 signers which has now been accomplished.
Check out the Free State Project which is succeeding in building communities like this across all of New Hampshire: http://www.freestateproject.org/ and http://www.freekeene.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/freekeene . The later two are sites dedicated to liberty, the migration of people to NH, freedom, etc. Also http://www.porcfest.org is a camping festival in the summer that is a great event worth attending for those who like the idea. You can meet the people from across New Hampshire who are moving/have moved/and to find out out more about what is going on here.
The 2nd part of the problem is a technological one. It doesn't matter if the FBI is or isn't permitted to break in because there are too many other adversaries online that can also break in and the law in the US matters not. It can't actually prevent people from breaking in even within the US. To stop the FBI does nothing to stop the NSA, the Russians, the British, the Chinese, or the criminals next door.
The solution to the problem is high latency networks that utilize caching to solve the high latency problem. Low latency networks like Tor are good enough for some use cases, and even with government attacks on it it's not dead and the issues can be resolved through hardware and software-level hardening, but if we really want to focus on solving these problems we should consider projects like Freenet. With hard disk capacities in the dozens of terrabyte range there is no reason we can't cache most content that might become of interest in an anonymity network thus reducing the need to even make requests that can be monitored or intercepted. To give people an idea of how much data can be stored on a single hard disk almost every hollywood film which has ever been produced can fit on the largest hard drives out today. Everything up until 2003 and then some portion thereafter. It may hinder real time communications- but that's probably not all that critical for those who need privacy and security from adversaries with significant resources such as the FBI.
Remember not too long ago the Obama regime was whining about criminal acts when Russian agents supposedly hacked the DNC. What is the new Trump regime going to say when China accuses us of hacking them? I don't think "That's okay, we granted our courts world wide jurisdiction" is going to impress them too much. I would really hope the world court starts filing extradition papers against these criminal hackers operating out of the FBI offices before we end up in another war.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3227527-Assistant-AG-letter-to-Sen-Wyden-Nov-18-2016.html
From Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik
It is important to note that the amendments [to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure] do not change any of the traditional
protections and procedures under the Fourth Amendment, such as the requirement that the government establish probable cause. Rather, the amendments would merely ensure that venue exists so that at least one court is available to consider whether a particular warrant application
comports with the Fourth Amendment.
Further, the amendments would not authorize the government to undertake any search or seizure or use any remote search technique, whether inside or outside the United States, that is not already permitted under current law. The use of remote searches is not new, and warrants for remote searches are currently issued under Rule 41. In addition, courts already permit the search of multiple computers pursuant to a single warrant, so long as the necessary legal requirements are met with respect to each computer. Nothing in the amendments changes the existing legal requirements.
Sen. Wyden is a fear mongering idiot.
Republican Justin Amash also supports the fourth amendment, and opposed SOPA and PIPA. There are a few good people left in Congress.
allow U.S. judges will be able to issue search warrants that give the FBI the authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction, potentially even overseas.
And that doesn't violate my country's law...how exactly?
Ezekiel 23:20
Windows 10, NVidia Drivers, Android, etc. There's a lot of Telemetry to be forwarded! Problem solved!
Am guessing that by now all the smart "bad" guys are already long gone from the net. They are, however, probably helping Obama and Trump with job creation by hiring couriers to share info.