from the all's-fair-in-love-and-cyber-war dept
The ends aren’t always supposed to justify the means. And a federal agency that already raised the hackles of defense lawyers around the nation during a CSAM investigation probably shouldn’t be in this much of hurry to start sending out unsolicited software to unknowing recipients.
But that’s the way things work now. As a result of the DOJ-propelled push to change Rule 41 jurisdiction limitations, the FBI is now able to infect computers anywhere in the United States using a single warrant. In the “Playpen” case, the software was used to obtain information about users and devices visiting a seized (but still live) dark web CSAM site.
A couple of years later, the lack of jurisdiction limitations were used for something a bit more useful for even innocent computer users: the FBI secured a single warrant authorizing it to send its botnet-battling software to computers all over the nation, resulting in the disinfection of thousands of computers.
And while this all seems like a net positive for US computer users, the underlying facts are a bit more worrying: judges will allow the FBI to place its software on any user’s computer at any time, provided it can convince a court the end result will be something other than a massive number of privacy violations.
It’s inarguable that disrupting botnets is a public good. But is it inarguable that disruption should occur by any m ..
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