<story><title>FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/</url><text>&amp;quot;It wasn’t ever seriously in doubt, but the FBI yesterday acknowledged that it secretly took control of Freedom Hosting last July, days before the servers of the largest provider of ultra-anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors.&amp;quot; ...</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>belorn</author><text>The use of malware in police enforcement is truly a unique event in society. At what other point in history has police distributed a completly illegal tool onto unsuspected and non-targeted civilians? It feels like a total unexplored area of liability laws, so I look with excitement to when the first lawsuit starts.&lt;p&gt;Some people have compared malware with guns. This is to me a very bad comparison, since guns actually have legal usage like hunting or self defense.&lt;p&gt;A better example would be a under cover cop, selling real drugs to real people with the intent to impress a local drug cartel. It has to my knowledge never happen, but it would be interesting to know if the cop could be held liable if someone dies from a overdose from those drugs.&lt;p&gt;Let say that a police virus spreads out of control, and infects millions of computers. What if this specific firefox exploit get copied by a botnet, and is used to execute credit card stealing software on unsuspected users. How liable can the police become when millions of people are effected? I really have no clue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>greenyoda</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s possible that installing malware on a machine could be legal if the police have a warrant to wiretap that specific machine. However, in this case, they indiscriminately pushed malware to thousands of users on that site, many of whom were probably not doing anything illegal. So how does this not violate the Fourth Amendment?&lt;p&gt;The Fourth Amendment says: &amp;quot;No Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.&amp;quot;[1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/</url><text>&amp;quot;It wasn’t ever seriously in doubt, but the FBI yesterday acknowledged that it secretly took control of Freedom Hosting last July, days before the servers of the largest provider of ultra-anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors.&amp;quot; ...</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>belorn</author><text>The use of malware in police enforcement is truly a unique event in society. At what other point in history has police distributed a completly illegal tool onto unsuspected and non-targeted civilians? It feels like a total unexplored area of liability laws, so I look with excitement to when the first lawsuit starts.&lt;p&gt;Some people have compared malware with guns. This is to me a very bad comparison, since guns actually have legal usage like hunting or self defense.&lt;p&gt;A better example would be a under cover cop, selling real drugs to real people with the intent to impress a local drug cartel. It has to my knowledge never happen, but it would be interesting to know if the cop could be held liable if someone dies from a overdose from those drugs.&lt;p&gt;Let say that a police virus spreads out of control, and infects millions of computers. What if this specific firefox exploit get copied by a botnet, and is used to execute credit card stealing software on unsuspected users. How liable can the police become when millions of people are effected? I really have no clue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pkinsky</author><text>The government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition.</text></comment>