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Proposed Rule Change to Expand Feds’ Legal Hacking Powers Moves Forward

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the bit-by-bit-by-bit dept.

A story from a few days ago:

Phoenix666 writes:

A controversial proposed judicial rule change allowing judges to issue warrants to conduct "remote access" against a target computer regardless of its location has been approved by a United States Courts committee, according to the Department of Justice.

Federal agents have been known to use such tactics in past and ongoing cases: a Colorado federal magistrate judge approved sending malware to a suspect's known e-mail address in 2012. But similar techniques have been rejected by other judges on Fourth Amendment grounds. If this rule revision were to be approved, it would standardize and expand federal agents' ability to surveil a suspect and to exfiltrate data from a target computer regardless of where it is. (Both the United States Army and the Drug Enforcement Administration are known to have purchased such exploits, most likely zero-days.)

This should become even more significant as the Internet of Things moves forward.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday June 03 2015, @02:45AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday June 03 2015, @02:45AM (#191407) Homepage

    Feds will be able to legally commit crimes if this passes. Obviously this is a "Bad Thing", but it's not like they aren't already committing crimes right now with surreptitious approval from the government, and it's not like passing this law will make the feds more open about all the crimes they are committing. All it's doing is making the de facto state of affairs de jure as well. May as well be honest about how corrupt our government has become.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @03:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @03:45AM (#191421)

    "Legally commit crime" is an oxymoron.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by In hydraulis on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:46AM

      by In hydraulis (386) on Wednesday June 03 2015, @04:46AM (#191434)

      Your objection is grounded in a rational reality.

      As far as I can tell, every English-speaking nation larger than a few million people has long since abandoned any semblance of rationality.

      Doublespeak is here.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:51PM (#191585)

        Doublespeak was here a while back. A few years back in Indiana, it was legal for police to illegally enter [nwitimes.com] homes and citizens could do nothing about it. Thankfully this has been fixed, but its mindboggling how a judge could say "We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @08:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @08:57AM (#191506)
    James Bond has a license to kill. More prosaically, executioners carrying out the death penalty aren't guilty of murder, even if they are causing the premeditated death of a human being. The police are permitted by law to do a great many things that would be illegal for an ordinary person to do, and the law basically gives them the authority to do it. But as with all expansion of what the agents of the government are allowed to do we have to ask if this really is a good idea. I'd say it's a terrible idea.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @06:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @06:52PM (#191719)

    Do you think they haven't been doing that before? I'd guess that the Silk Road bust included a lot of illegal things but of course we'll never hear about it.

  • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:56AM

    by davester666 (155) on Thursday June 04 2015, @06:56AM (#191941)

    They aren't "passing a law".

    They [judges/lawyers] are simply deciding "let's declare that this legal, and since we are the only ones who get to speak in court, what other people want doesn't matter".