U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan ordered the FBI to produce the full
     code of its malware.
     The government refused.
     I’m not making that up.
     A federal judge told the government to do something and the FBI
     essentially said, “How you gonna make me?”
     This is not good.

     I thought Apple had a really solid argument for refusing to help the
     government hack into one of their phones that was used by the San
     Bernardino shooter. The government eventually figured out how to do
     it without Apple’s help, but I don’t think a company should be
     forced to break its own system.
     Same goes for the government. I don’t think the government should be
     compelled to reveal its code for catching criminals. Don’t get me
     wrong, I do think the government should be compelled to reveal that
     it has a code or a hack or some malware that allows it to spy on us.
     I think they should have to explain in plain English how it works,
     and I think we should be able to have a national, public
     conversation about whether or not we want to the government to have
     this kind of power. But I see limited upside in forcing the
     government to reveal the actual code for its software, if it doesn’t
     want to and reasonably believes that revealing the code would do
     real harm.
     However, there are consequences to that position. If the government
     obtains evidence against you, you have the right to know how they
     did it. If the government doesn’t want to reveal that to you, well,
     then you get to take a walk. That might sound “unfair” to the vast
     majority of Americans who would trade seemingly all their liberties
     for a little enhanced security, but the Fourth Amendment is there to
     protect you from the government even when you don’t know you need
     protecting.
     All of these competing interests are coming to a head in a
     Washington case involving an alleged child pornographer. The FBI
     obtained evidence against Jay Michaud, a local teacher, by placing
     malware on a Tor site frequented by “dark web” users.
     Michaud’s attorneys would like to see the code used by the
     government to gather evidence against their client. Normally, that’s
     a pretty standard and reasonable request. Unfortunately, other dark
     web users would also really like to know how the FBI is catching
     them. Getting their hands on the code would be huge. Even if the
     code is produced in “sealed” documents, we can’t pretend that we
     live in a leak-free world.
     U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan ordered the FBI to produce the full
     code of its malware.
     The government refused.
     I’m not making that up.
     A federal judge told the government to do something and the FBI
     essentially said, “How you gonna make me?”
     This is not good. This is a borderline constitutional crisis. In
     response, Judge Bryan tossed the evidence against Michaud obtained
     by the malware, but allowed the case to continue. On Simple Justice,
     Scott Greenfield has written passionately about how Judge Bryan
     caved to pressure from the executive branch.
     (Judge Kneels And Welcomes His Governmental Overlords link)
     I don’t think the FBI should be compelled to release its code. I’m
     reminded of when the Allies broke the Enigma code, a story recently
     popularized in the movie The Imitation Game. Once we broke the
     German code, we didn’t stop every attack we knew was coming.
     Preserving the hack was more important than preventing individual
     losses. People died because we didn’t want to reveal what we had.
     There were consequences to our decision.
     Here, Judge Bryan should have tossed the whole case against Michaud.
     That should be the consequence of the FBI’s decision. Yes, that
     means one alleged child pornographer and teacher goes free. Yes,
     that is unfortunate. But if the FBI really wants to protect its
     code, then they should be willing to give up this one guy for all of
     the information they are getting through using this hack.
     It’s a difficult decision, but if the FBI and Judge Bryan don’t want
     to make it, they should get into the cupcake business and leave the
     balancing of liberty and security to sterner men and women.
     Prosecute the alleged criminal under the agreed upon rules that are
     there to protect all of us, or do not. There is no try.

   With links onsite:
   [1]http://www.atlredline.com/the-fbi-can-keep-its-code-or-its-criminal-
   not-both-1779910675

References

   1. http://www.atlredline.com/the-fbi-can-keep-its-code-or-its-criminal-not-both-1779910675