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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of ink being spilled on what is really a pretty minor technical change. The FBI can break into your house so long as it gets a search warrant. So why shouldn't it be able to hack into your computer with a warrant too? What the rule changes do is just change the jurisdictional requirements for obtaining those warrants. Those changes make sense: the FBI may have no idea what district a particular computer is in. Under those circumstances, the rules permit the FBI to get a warrant from a judge in any district.

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This enables the equivalent of getting a warrant for everyone who might have visited a mall, and breaking into thousands of houses, which doesn't meet the constitutional requirements for a warrant. Thats the problem here. They aren't getting a warrant for every computer they hack, they are getting a general warrant, which is an abuse the colonists endured under the monarchy that spurred them to create that part of the constitution in the first place!

> The FBI can break into your house so long as it gets a search warrant. So why shouldn't it be able to hack into your computer with a warrant too?

The huge difference is that when FBI breaks into your house you always know it.

  > when FBI breaks into your house you always know it

That's not true.

  In January 2014, the bureau obtained a court-issued “sneak and peek” warrant,
  allowing agents to secretly search Raphel’s northwest Washington home while
  she was away.

  The FBI sent a special Evidence Response Team trained in surreptitious
  searches. Raphel’s home had an alarm system, which the FBI team bypassed.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-last-diplomat-1480695454

That article is a fascinating read.

Yes, very disturbing and reminiscent of that Richelieu quote, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Im just guessing but: So if they can't find or contact the owner of a building they have to wait to break in? I'm pretty sure they do the knock once break the door down thing in this case.

> Those changes make sense

The FBI now even hacks thousands of computers in hundreds of other countries. Still make sense?

EDIT - Here you go:

"The FBI ended up hacking some 8,700 computers in 120 countries."

From: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/us-judges-can-now-sign-glo...

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