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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

An FBI operation that installed spyware from a seized server to reveal the addresses of Tor users may be undermined by a failure to obtain the correct warrant [theregister.co.uk]:

A ruling by a US federal judge could unravel as many as 1,200 criminal prosecutions of alleged pedophiles by the FBI. Massachusetts District Court Judge William Young today declared that the magistrate judge who issued a warrant authorizing the FBI to infect suspects' PCs with tracking malware lacked the proper authority to do so. In early 2015, the Feds had used the warrant to install a so-called NIT – a Network Investigative Technique [theregister.co.uk] – on the computers of people who visited a website hidden in the Tor network that hosted a huge archive of photos and videos of child sex abuse.

[...] "It follows that the resulting search was conducted as though there were no warrant at all," Judge Young said in his ruling [regmedia.co.uk] [PDF]. "Since warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable, and the good-faith exception is inapplicable, the evidence must be excluded." [...] According to Judge Young, the problem with the warrant was that it was signed by a US magistrate judge, who only had the jurisdiction to authorize warrants in his local area. Collecting evidence outside of that area, which the FBI surely did with the NIT, can only be done with the authorization of a district judge. This is where things will be particularly frustrating for the Feds, as it turns out the federal judges who could have properly authorized the search were likely just yards away when the NIT warrant was signed.

Also at Reuters [reuters.com] and TechCrunch [techcrunch.com].

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