Essential, this order will let a US judge can grant an FBI agent in, say, New York, permission to hack into a computer in San Francisco, or potentially any city in the world, in order to help in their investigations. The court documents also state that the US based judge can also grant a warrant if a suspect uses tools to hide their identity, such as Tor. The judgement is in line with an amendment, first introduced in 2014 and it allows US authorities to keep pace with the dynamics of Internet but at the same time it also raises privacy and security issues. Google has already spoken out against the said amendment in a blog. It comes just a week after a Massachusetts judge dismissed evidence obtained by the FBI using a network investigative technique in a case involving a Dark Web site that distributed images of child sexual abuse. It was Rule 41 that rendered the FBI’s findings invalid in court. The US Department of Justice’s spokesperson Peter Carr told Motherboard: Privacy advocates and civil liberty groups have voiced their concerns over empowering FBI to such a degree without proper oversight. It remains to be seen how FBI makes use of this judgement in cases where suspects are in foreign countries like say United Kingdom and how the law becomes applicable there. This amendment ensures that courts can be asked to review warrant applications in situations where is it currently unclear what judge has that authority. The amendment makes explicit that it does not change the traditional rules governing probable cause and notice.
