SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A federal judge for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled that the user of any computer that connects to the Internet should not have an expectation of privacy because computer security is ineffectual at stopping hackers.
"Hacking is much more prevalent now than it was even nine years ago, and the rise of computer hacking via the Internet has changed the public's reasonable expectations of privacy," the judge wrote. "Now, it seems unreasonable to think that a computer connected to the Web is immune from invasion. Indeed, the opposite holds true: In today's digital world, it appears to be a virtual certainty that computers accessing the Internet can—and eventually will—be hacked."
The judge argued that the FBI did not even need the original warrant to use the NIT [Network Investigative technique/Toolkit] against visitors to PlayPen, a hidden service on the Tor network that acted as a hub for child exploitation.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Saturday July 02 2016, @05:48PM
The difficulty here is that the FBI were in control of and distributing child pornography. Big no-no as it wasn't a part of the original operation, as well as questions as to when/why the FBI gets to break the law.
The other part, if i recall correctly, is that the FBI have not revealed how they obtained the IP addresses, so there are questions as to the veracity of the evidence and even who actually accessed the site (see story here [soylentnews.org]with another court ruling that an IP address isn't enough to establish guilt).
Charges have already been dropped in several of the arrests since the FBI didn't attempt to obtain a warrant, so this seems like hail marry to see if the charges will stick.
And after all that, you can have the philosophical argument of police monitoring even though you are in a public space without just cause. It seems the police get very irate when the cameras are turned back on them, even though they are in a public space too.
I doubt the judge would take kindly to people peering into the windows of his house.