Nathan Freed Wessler writes:
A government proposal to change the rules for obtaining search warrants risks making all of us more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
The FBI wants to be able to infect computers with malware when it doesn’t know where exactly they’re located. The implications for computer security, and for constitutional limits on the government’s search powers, are drastic.
The Department of Justice is asking a judicial committee to amend Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which generally permits magistrate judges to issue search warrants to the government only for searches within their judicial district. The government wants to lift the geographical limitation to allow it to conduct electronic surveillance of devices whose locations are unknown.
Read more on ACLU’s Blog.