Privacy advocates are claiming in court that an FBI hacking operation to take down a child pornography site was unconstitutional and violated international law.
Privacy advocates are claiming in court that an FBI hacking operation to take down a child pornography site was unconstitutional and violated international law.
That’s because the operation involved the FBI hacking 8,700 computers in 120 countries, based on a single warrant, they said.
“How will other countries react to the FBI hacking in their jurisdictions without prior consent?” wrote Scarlet Kim, a legal officer with U. K.-based Privacy International.
On Friday, that group, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, filed briefs in a lawsuit involving the FBI’s hacking operation against Playpen. The child pornography site was accessible through Tor, a browser designed for anonymous web surfing. But in 2014, the FBI managed to take it over.
In a controversial move, the agency then decided to use the site to essentially infect visitors with malware as a way to track them down.
As a result, the FBI is prosecuting hundreds who were found visiting the site, but it also happened to hack into computers from 120 countries.
