Slashdot Mirror
Three Privacy Groups Challenge The FBI's Malware-Obtained Evidence (eff.org)
In 2015 the FBI took over a Tor-accessible child pornography site to infect its users with malware so they could be identified and prosecuted. But now one suspect is challenging that evidence in court, with three different privacy groups filing briefs in his support.
An anonymous reader writes.
One EFF attorney argues it's a classic case of an unreasonable search, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. "If the FBI tried to get a single warrant to search 8,000 houses, such a request would unquestionably be denied." But there's another problem, since the FBI infected users in 120 different countries. "According to Privacy International, the case also raises important questions: What if a foreign country had carried out a similar hacking operation that affected U.S. citizens?" writes Computerworld. "Would the U.S. welcome this...? The U.S. was overstepping its bounds by conducting an investigation outside its borders without the consent of affected countries, the group said."
The FBI's evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise "the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come... Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched won't be upheld."
The FBI's evidence is also being challenged by the ACLU of Massachusetts, and the EFF plans to file two more challenges in March, warning that otherwise "the precedent is likely to impact the digital privacy rights of all Internet users for years to come... Courts need to send a very clear message that vague search warrants that lack the required specifics about who and what is to be searched won't be upheld."
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
James Comey and friends spent 2 weeks as the biggest distributors of child porn on the planet, when they took over a child porn website, added server capacity, and kept it running. I get that we want to catch the bad guys, but the FBI is way overstepping its bounds lately. If you agree with the concept that distributing child porn harms the children over and over again, then the FBI itself is responsible for unimaginable amounts of harm to kids.
You're missing the part about this not being about them, but about unconstitutional search of *any* suspect. Just because these suspects are alleged to have committed particularly unpopular crimes does not mean a different set of rules applies. If the FBI uses child porn as the wedge issue to get precedent allowing unreasonable searches, we all suffer, not just the child porn consumers.
People who look at CP deserve everything that comes to them. Including malware
Define "Child Porn" for us.
Maybe it's just naked children? If that's the case, my parents should be in jail for life and then some.
On the other hand, I have seen very old photographs of pre-teen and teen girls that were just frolicking at the beach. They looked very happy. The name of the photographer escapes me, but outside of puritanical societies he's considered a great photographer. (DuckDucking for it is turning up nothing and I don't want to press it with Google or some other search engine that spies on people) I was at a gallery outside of the USA that doesn't have Byzantine laws written by repressed pedophiles and homosexuals that are out to prove something.
The photos were not in the least arousing in any sort of way and the children were hardly being exploited. It was just photographs of kids at play.
Some great art has naked children all over it. Some of them are called cherubs.
If the children are being hurt, we go after the producers. Going after consumers will be a never ending endeavor of whack-a-mole.
Now as far as porn where children are being victimized and abused, how about we solve the problem of HOW those children end up there in the first place.
But we won't America is all about being at "war" with symptoms of problems and not about actually solving them.
I believe their is a saying about this. It goes something like.
"For those who defend against unjust laws, they typically find themselves defending scoundrels as those are the one these unjust laws first target".
Basically it comes down to you either defend against an unjust law even when it is used against someone you hate because otherwise that legitimizes it and set the precedence to be used on you and others like you as well.
Not the same thing at all. The marked bill thing only comes into play after other collaborative evidence is revealed, like the video footage of the theft. Simply possessing the marked bill does nothing and even if you where handed a "hot" marked bill by a robber won't place you in the same legal boat that he is in.
Yes child porn is very bad, but our laws on unreasonable searches don't allow for blanket searches (by law enforcement, private security into a private venue is not the same, you can walk away from the door, not a police search). IMO, child porn and drunk driving are two subjects that america is playing with fire with the whole "these things are so bad they must supersede the constructional protections we all enjoy to stop it."
Sorry, Had to reply to myself. Actually something DID happen, a democratically elected government was ousted in Brazil, and a US backed GANG took power and Brazil is a MESS politically since 2014.
Probably David Hamilton, who recently committed suicide under suspicion of having raped some of the underage girls he photographed decades ago. Perhaps not the best example to be used in defense of photographs of naked children.
Of course he's a witch! He wouldn't have been accused of witchcraft if he wasn't a witch. Stands to reason.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Spying on the population was a big driver behind the THIRD amendment:
While forcing the colonists to provide housing and upkeep for the soldiers sent to oppress them was an economic issue, there was more to it than that.
A soldier "quartered" in a colonist's house also served as a spy for the crown and its army. He eavesdropped on the conversations of the family and visiting friends. He had the opportunity to view their records when they weren't home (or even if they were). He reported anything suspicious to his unit. His presence inhibited getting together with others to hold private discussions, especially about opposing (by protest or otherwise) anything the government was doing. He was a continuous walking search, fed and housed by the people he was investigating.
It seems to me that law-enforcement and intelligence agency spyware, such as keyloggers and various data exfiltration tools, is EXACTLY the digital equivalent: It is a digital agent that "lives" in the home or office of the target. It consums the target's resources (disk space, CPU cycles network bandwidth) to support itself. It spies spying on the activities and "papers" of the target, reporting anything suspicious (or anything, actually) back to its commander, to be used as evidence and/or to trigger an arrest or other attack. It is ready, at a moment's notice, to forcefully interfere with, destroy, or corrupt the target's facilities or send forged messages from him.
Spyware is EXACTLY one of the most egregious acts (one of the "Intolerable Acts") that sparked the American Revolution. I'd love to see the Third brought back out of the doldrums and used against these "digital soldiers" the government is "quartering" inside our personal and private computing devices.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First they came for pedophiles, then they came for me.
dammit, it wasn't meant to be a pun, it was meant to be an insightful commentary on how we can judge a society by how it treats the most despised and how they can use the same tools on the rest of us, dammit I did it again, I mean spy tools. Now because of you people and your twisted imaginations nothing can undo iterations of that pun from being in my head.
This is the problem with infringing anyones rights, it turns wisdom into a bad joke.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.