FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails

[Ben Tasker]

> In an effort to address concerns, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Leslie
Caldwell wrote a blog post this week arguing that the > benefits given to
authorities from the rule changes outweighed any potential for "unintended
harm."

That old line again. We know there are some serious concerns about this,
and we know you're right and can't begin to formulate an argument against,
but we really want these powers, so trust us it's for the greater good.


It's a bit like how the UK Investigatory Powers Act contains many, many
"safeguards". All of which are just promises not to misuse the data.

Politicians never seem to get the argument that even if *they* are
trustworthy, there's nothing to say the next bloke isn't going to be a
nutjob.

The post it refers to is here -
https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/additional-considerations-regarding-proposed-amendments-federal-rules-criminal-procedure
- it places a lot of focus on various things they want to use it to stop,
using the aged tactic of dropping some emotive crimes in there so that it's
hard for people to disagree.

Looking at the text though -
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_41

(6) a magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities
related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to
use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy
electronically stored information located within or outside that district
if:

(A) the district where the media or information is located has been
concealed through technological means; or

(B) in an investigation of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5), the media
are protected computers that have been damaged without authorization and
are located in five or more districts.

There doesn't seem to be any restriction on what it can be used for, only
that it fall under criminal law (and the things that fall under that tend
to change over time). No reason they couldn't apply that to "criminal
copyright infringement" for example.


I do wonder how the American exceptionalists are going to cope when other
countries pass similar legislation and starting popping American systems in
greater numbers ("Well, it's legal under our laws"). Mind you, not like
they haven't been getting extra-territorial for quite some time anyway.

In both this and the UK IPA, it seems to be a case of legalising behaviour
that's been going on for a long time anyway, rather than actually stepping
back and looking at whether that behaviour is actually right (legal or not).

Bad times ahead me thinks.

On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 6:30 AM, Cecilia Tanaka <cecilia.tanaka at gmail.com>
wrote:

> FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails
>
> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-congress-idUSKBN13P2ER
>
> "[...] allow U.S. judges will be able to issue search warrants that give
> the FBI the authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction,
> potentially even overseas."
>
> "[...] in the hands of an administration of President-elect Trump, a
> Republican who has "openly said he wants the power to hack his political
> opponents the same way Russia does."
>
> We are discussing the bad possibilities in some legal and technical
> studies groups in my country.  Our laws don't permiss this kind of
> violation.  Fu¢k FBI.
>



-- 
Ben Tasker
https://www.bentasker.co.uk
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