20 January, 2015

You'll Never Guess Who's Trying to Hack Your iPhone : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

You'll Never Guess Who's Trying to Hack Your iPhone : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education:

But under the limits of the Fourth Amendment, nothing it finds can be
used to prosecute its targets. Now the FBI is taking steps to carry out
broad searches and data collection under the color of authority, making
all of us more vulnerable to “fishing expeditions.”




The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to
short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a
change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural
rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal
prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules
can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The
specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a
search warrant.





It’s called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow
law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without
providing any specific details as long as the target computer location
has been hidden through a technical tool like Tor or a virtual private network.