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Comment by ptx | Hacker News Reader

> The U.S. Justice Department, which has pushed for the rule change since 2013, has described it as a minor modification needed to modernize the criminal code for the digital age, and has said it would not permit searches or seizures that are not already legal.

So... "Don't worry about this seemingly bad change, because it will have no effect!"?

I have a counter-proposal then: Let's not make the change, as that will also have no effect, and everyone will be happy.

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Nowhere in your quote does the FBI say it will "have no effect." It says that "it would not permit searches or seizures that are not already legal." All the rule changes is which court the FBI has to go to for the warrant, and even then only under specific circumstances.

So it doesn't change what is legal, just who determines what is legal. Which is arguably worse given how fast (and presumably biased) some districts are, i.e rocket docket, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_f...

What makes you presume E.D. Va. is "biased?" Towards who?

Cases like http://lavabit.com/ which give a defendant little to no time to prepare. Which is all to say the FBI wanted this for a specific reason, and many courts give them a lot more leeway and less transparency for the public.

The FBI wanted this for the reason that it's often very difficult to figure out where something or someone on the Internet is physically located.

It's manifestly false that "it would not permit searches or seizures that are not already legal." Currently if all I have is a warrant issued in Venue A then it is illegal for me to do a search in Venue B on the basis of that warrant. But after the change under some circumstances, the Venue A warrant makes it legal for me to do a search in Venue B.

Thus searches that were illegal are now legal.

Otherwise why bother making any change?

Congress gave the FBI the role to hack any computer anywhere in the world, no matter who those computers were suspected to belong to.

When it needed a warrant it had a pretty complicated process, and frequently resorted to gaining cooperation with the local authorities in another country and getting dual local warrant equivalents in another country. A costly redundancy and not always achievable.

The FBI is just getting the US court system to help with the mandate Congress already gave them.

Or, rephrased, Congress gave the FBI a mandate they couldn't legally fulfil.

Can you be more specific here? Normally, when Congress tasks an agency with something, that tasking defines the contours of what is and isn't legal. Defining "legal" is Congress's job.

that's not true at all.

The FBI has had no problem hacking computers around the world, getting the legal cooperation required domestically and abroad, and winning court cases.

This change simply streamlines the process

I don't think that's quite right. As I understand it, the FBI could get a search warrant for non-US computers from courts essentially anywhere in the US they liked under the old rules. What they couldn't do was get a warrant from a judge and use it to hack computers in the US that were outside that judge's jurisdiction.

hey, the rules I was referring to were the old rules, not today's article.

Can you point me to the statutory language that "gave the FBI the role to hack any computer anywhere in the world, no matter who those computers were suspected to belong to"? Thanks.

sure I'll see if I can find it, I had looked into this for the Silk Road case, where they hacked into a computer in Reykjavik Iceland

I found it at that point in time

There is a different between "legal to do" and "within one's jurisdiction".

They are clearly lying through indirection unfortunately. :P

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