The FBI is unstoppable: The latest three legislative attempts to stop the changes to Article 41 (Rule 41) regarding new federal rules on criminal procedure seem to have failed. From today, federations can hacking on your PC with much less hassle.
The new regulation was enacted by the US Supreme Court last April and will allow the FBI and police to apply to the nearest US judge for a warrant that would allow them to hack wherever the computers. So authorities will be able to crack down on any suspect who uses Tor, VPN, or some other anonymization software to hide its tracks.
Normally, until nowadays, when agents wished to break a suspect's computer, they had to seek a warrant from a judge who had the area where the machine was in his jurisdiction. But this is very difficult with today's technology.
With the changes brought to the 41 article, researchers can take a warrant from any judge and develop some malware to find out where the suspect is, which could be anywhere in America or around the world.
Also, the new 41 article will allow authorities to go to a single judge for a warrant, not all courts.
This extension of the law gives extra hacking powers without any discussion in Congress or a vote, just by an administrative change.
Shortly after the decision in April, Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul tried to stop the bill by presenting the Stopping Mass Hacking Act (SMH) Act, which he seized at Congress. Wyden made a last appeal to the Senate on Wednesday, but was rejected.
"The changes from Article 41 will come into force tomorrow (today 1 December), without any hearing or marking to review and assess the changes," it said. "Although the proposed changes are not necessarily bad or good, they are serious, and since there are significant concerns about it protection of private life require closer examination and discussion.”
