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Comment by ramblenode | Hacker News Reader

The rule actually makes sense in a vacuum; tying warrants to geographical jurisdictions is a relic of a pre-internet age. The real problem is more fundamental: judge shopping. If the rule change goes ahead as planned, authorities will have an inexhaustible menu of magistrates spanning the whole country to whom they can appeal for a warrant. There needs to be 1) some randomization process for assigning warrant requests to judges, and 2) a way of factoring in any past denials for a warrant in future re-requests.

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Mostly true.

The other issue with this is that with a traditional warrant you know that they are gaining access. You might not be happy with it, they may have even busted down the door on the way in, but whatever damage was done was done once.

With this they break in (potentially damaging your systems), they take your data (potentially in ways that could leak it to other parties), store it (potentially insecurely), and even though your operations are compromised you have no idea.

Who is on the hook when the FBI leaks your SSH keys after they used a 0day to break into your machine and vacuum up everything on the HD? What if those keys are used to issue a software update that crashes every one of your businesses self driving cars all at once?

Note also how poorly the government protects so many of its crown jewels of data. Like those OPM security clearance records. And need I mention Mr. Snowden, or Sidney Blumenthal, who didn't hold any sort of clearance, cutting and pasting NSA GAMMA material? If you can't trust the NSA, who can you trust ^_^?

Aren't those issues already present under the current rule, when a magistrate judge in the district in which the target computer resides issues a warrant to remotely break in to that computer?

This rule is just dealing with who can issue a warrant, not with what can be done once a warrant is issued.

I think you're forgetting the other, more important, aspect of this change. It gives enforcers of the government the legal ability to get 1 generic warrant and then hack tens of thousands of people with that one warrant just because they are using network protocols that make them anonymous.

> The rule actually makes sense in a vacuum; tying warrants to geographical jurisdictions is a relic of a pre-internet age. The real problem is more fundamental: judge shopping.

Note that this only removes the tie to geography in two circumstances:

1. The location of the targeted data has been "concealed through technological means", or

2. the crime being investigated is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the damaged computers are in five or more districts.

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