The US Supreme Court has just amended a procedural rule, known as
Rule 41, that would allow judges to issue warrants for the government to hack computers anywhere, even outside their jurisdictions or if those computers belong to innocent victims of criminal hacking.
The rule changes will go into effect on 1 December 2016, unless the US Congress passes legislation to reverse the rule changes.
At issue is how the government obtains a warrant to use so-called “network investigative techniques” (NIT) to remotely access computers as part of an investigation.
Under current procedural rules, a judge can only issue an NIT warrant for surveillance of computers within the judge’s jurisdiction.
The US Department of Justice requested the Rule 41 change because sometimes it’s not possible to know the physical location of a computer, such as when someone uses the anonymizing
Tor network.
