A U.S. court has ruled that the FBI can hack into a computer without a warrant -- a move which is troubling privacy advocates.
The criminal case involves a child pornography site, Playpen, that had been accessible through
Tor, a browser designed for anonymous web surfing.
The FBI, however, managed to take over the site in 2014, and then tracked down and arrested its members by hacking their computers. This allowed law enforcement to
secretly collect their IP addresses.
One of the arrested suspects has argued that the evidence against him had been unlawfully seized. But a U.S. court in Virginia has ruled in favor of the FBI, according to court documents
unsealed on Thursday.
The judge, Henry Morgan, ruled that even though the FBI obtained a warrant to hack into the suspect's computer, none was needed.
The suspect may have used Tor to keep his browsing anonymous, but his IP address still isn't private information, the judge wrote in his ruling. This is because the IP address is given out to third parties in order to access the Internet and even the Tor network.
