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- cross-posted to:
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FBI, Federal Judge Agree Fighting Botnets Means Allowing The FBI To Remotely Install Software On People’s Computers::The ends aren’t always supposed to justify the means. And a federal agency that already raised the hackles of defense lawyers around the nation during a CSAM investigation probably shouldn’t be in this much of hurry to start sending out unsolicited software to unknowing recipients. But that’s the way things work now. As a result…
It doesn’t matter if what they did had good intentions or that they made their actions public after they modified people’s systems. The precedent this sets is that anything that a judge feels is “bad” can be removed from your system.
The intentions and the specifics of the granted warrant does matter. It’s like someone placed a bunch of remotely controlled booby-traps in homes across the city. Law enforcement discovers the booby-traps and knows all the homes involved, and that the threat is real and imminent. Granting a warrant allowing law enforcement to remove the traps before someone is injured is not unreasonable.
The scope of the warrant is very specific… they can enter the property to remove the threat, and for no other purpose. That would not be unreasonable and nobody is going to complain that LE wasn’t acting in everyone’s best interest, even if residents didn’t consent to having the booby-trap removed. Nobody wants it and it poses a continuous threat while present. Removing it asap is the right thing to do.
My turn for a straw man, it’s like the FBI adding local dns entries to your system so you can’t go to porn sites because one judge thinks porn is bad for everyone and stopping people from watching porn is good.