Privacy
In a ruling on one of the cases related to FBI hacking of Internet users, a federal judge for the Eastern District of Virginia insisted that there could be no expectation of privacy for any personal computer that has a connection to the Internet, because computer security is “ineffectual.”
The FBI used single warrants as a pretext for mass hacking of broad numbers of American Internet users, a practice which sparked a flurry of lawsuits. The judge not only upheld the FBI’s broad interpretation of the warrants, but even claims they didn’t need warrants at all to hack any PCs on the Internet, because it was “not objectively reasonable” to think you aren’t going to be hacked by the FBI.
This ruling is starkly different from previous rulings by other courts, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation blasted it as “far outside of the legal notion of privacy.” They urged another court to quickly overturn it, warning that the Justice Department will probably use the ruling to expand their hacking schemes.
The ruling also appears to do significant harm to the concept of “malware” from a legal perspective, as the FBI argued its hacking software wasn’t “technically” malicious, and therefore couldn’t be considered malware.
The “justice” system needs to be purged of these kangaroo judges like Coke.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Rick. The so-called “justice” system sorely needs to be purged of these kangaroo clown judges such as Henry Coke Morgan, who seems to be making attempts at making law, regarding hacking.
Hacking is still illegal, whether it’s from some computer geek, or the Alphabet agencies. Hacking is hacking; period .. And, Alphabets such as the FBI, CIA, NSA or DHS are just as accountable as are ordinary hackers. Nobody’s above the law. Judge Coke cannot change that, since judges cannot make law. Only the Legislature has that authority.
And of course they slam the book, and then some, at those who they label hackers.
Worse than making law, these judges are rubber-stamping whatever the corrupt establishment wants. This is the FBI writing its own laws for itself and then getting some bozo to sign the dotted line.
Wait… so… does this mean hacking is legal now..?
As long as you work for the FBI it seems.
So can the police just barge into any house any time they feel like it on the grounds that front doors are ineffective against battering rams? And it doesn’t phaze this POS judge that the actions taken by police he would happily consider criminal if mundanes had done it. Or considered an act of war if Iran had done it.
“Computer security is ineffectual”…… but how long did it take them to open a cell phone? And how many others are sitting in evidence lockers unhacked? I suppose the upside to this is that there will no longer be any need to seize personal computers since, after all, they’re wide open for inspection.
I guess I’ll have to move my extensive collection of amputee midget clown porn to an offline storage drive, huh.
And what about the numerous hackers, etc. who are sitting in federal prison for infecting/stealing data from private computers. Also, I should add, federal government computers and networks.
Are they now all going to appeal on the grounds that this idiot judge has declared that their acts were “non crimes” due to the supposed lack of privacy on internet connected devices? So spam, malware, piracy, etc. are now “legal” per this judge? Somehow I doubt that…