The FBI is appealing to an obscure judicial advisory committee to massively expand their ability to hack into computers and target internet users, but privacy advocates want them forced before Congress.
Under a law called “Rule 41,” federal judges can only issue search warrants within their own jurisdiction. The FBI wants that rule changed so that judges can grant them access to mobile devices and networks regardless of jurisdiction.
This way the location of a targeted device would no longer matter—a huge gain for the FBI, allowing it to access computers that have used privacy tools like Tor to mask their location.
But privacy advocates showed up at a hearing regarding the rule change, the Hill reported, and accused these warrants of being overly vague and unconstitutional.
According to these advocates, changing the rule would mean that the FBI could target thousands of people with one warrant: every person who visited a website, for example, or every computer on a certain server.
Some argued that a change this significant should be brought before Congress, and not be settled by the panel at all.
The committee in question, the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules, is a small panel tasked with deciding things like which courthouse law enforcement agencies appeal to for warrants. Arguing constitutional law is, usually, outside their purview.
But one privacy advocate, Kevvin Bankston of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, said that in this case, “To create that rule, you need to first assume that such a warrant would be constitutional.”
In addition to constitutional concerns about the proposed new rule’s broad grant of powers, it would also allow the FBI to access computers in any country in the world.
“To be seeking these powers at a time of heightened international concern about US surveillance is an especially brazen and potentially dangerous move,” computer law expert Ahmed Ghappour told the Guardian before the hearing.
