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from the hack-and-search-sounds-like-a-boring-dungeon-crawl dept.
The U.S. Department of Justice wants new authority to hack and search remote computers during investigations, saying the new rules (Giant pdf) are needed because of complex criminal schemes sometimes using millions of machines spread across the country. Digital rights groups say the request from the DOJ for authority to search computers outside the district where an investigation is based raises concerns about Internet security and Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. "By expanding federal law enforcement's power to secretly exploit 'zero-day' vulnerabilities in software and Internet platforms, the proposal threatens to weaken Internet security for all of us," Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said by email.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 13 2014, @06:07PM
How about we give DOJ the authority to scan and fix our computers?
obviously criminals cannot abuse secure computers for nefarious purposes then?
so let's all connect to DOJ and let the tax p(r)ayer sponsored government entity ...
scan our computers for vulnerabilities and recommend solutions to be more secure?
now this would be "tax monies hard at work"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 13 2014, @10:30PM
"How about we give DOJ the authority to scan and fix our computers?"
Due to the proprietary/secret nature of black box anti-X scanners, they very well could already have DOJ secret agreements/back doors with the companies providing the software to scan your system and collect data and you may never know it. How many anti-X scanners for Windows are open source vs. those in use by the majority of Windows users?
Simply turning off the option(s) to submit so called anonymous data back to the company HQ may not be enough. Some EULAs for anti-X products are scary, try reading one through sometime, some collect information on most or all of your hardware and more!