The recent Rule 41 change does not affect the burden of proof requirement to establish probable cause to secure a search warrant under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Even if a warrant was issued to PIA about searching and seizing electronic media, because we do not log internet activity, there is no way to trace the activity to a specific user.

Because this rule change allows the government to hack individuals outside of the United States, it is ever important that our subscribers remain vigilant and maintain best practices for protecting their privacy. That means not letting yourself be socially engineered and protecting your network against potentially malicious traffic. While a VPN can help protect your privacy, it is only one of several tools that when used together protects the privacy of you and your family.

The post Private Internet Access responds to Rule 41 change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure appeared first on Privacy News Online by Private Internet Access VPN.

This bill won’t even stop the changes to Rule 41, only delay them until July 1st. The Senators hope that public awareness of this unconstitutional development will rise after the lame duck session and further legislation can be passed in order to reign in the DOJ.

Senator Wyden first started the fight against the Rule 41 amendment much earlier this year when he introduced the Stop Mass Hacking (SMH) Act. With the SMH Act, Senator Wyden and the bill’s other cosponsors sought “to prevent the proposed amendments to rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure from taking effect.” As of November, The Politico marked the SMH Act as dead in the water, partly because of the lack of support from any of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Coons, is the one submitting the bill.

The Department of Justice refused to justify why they need to be able to hack everybody with Rule 41

Earlier this year, a bi-partisan coalition of Senators and House Representatives drafted a letter to the Department of Justice asking for clarification on the Rule 41 amendment. In response, they got a limited letter from the DOJ that didn’t answer any technical questions or address any of their concerns. Senator Wyden, along with the 23 other senators, responded to the Department of Justice sternly:

“The American people deserve answers to these very basic questions about how our government intends to hack thousands or millions of personal devices with a single warrant. The Justice Department’s failure to answer these questions should be a big blinking warning sign about whether the government can be trusted to carry out these hacks without harming the security and privacy of innocent Americans’ phones, computers and other devices.”

Changing the rules of the game so that one warrant can cover thousands or millions of devices is exactly as alarming as it sounds. The Rule 41 amendment will be used against those that obfuscate their location through technological means. This doesn’t just mean changing your IP address through the use of Tor, VPNs, or even free proxies. This could also means denying location data to a mobile app, or lying about your country of residence while signing up for a service online. Legally, it’s long been shown that having a different IP address is not enough probable cause to issue a search warrant. The DOJ’s changes to Rule 41 are alarming because they don’t address basic issues such as that. What about the millions of students and workers that rely on VPN to work securely?

Since the internet is open, the DOJ is essentially granting warrants to itself to search and infect devices that don’t even belong to US citizens, and won’t even be on US soil. That problem becomes even more blatant when you do the same to US citizens, who are supposed to be protected by the Fourth Amendment. As it stands, S.3475 is the only piece of legislation that can stop the Rule 41 amendment from going into affect on December 1st. If you’re interested in contacting your Senator and letting him or her know that they need to vote for S.3475, the EFF, FFTF, and AccessNow have resources that will help you.

The post Bipartisan group of Senators introduce S.3475 to delay the DOJ from being able to unconstitutionally hack millions of devices with a blanket warrant under an amendment to Rule 41 appeared first on Privacy News Online by Private Internet Access VPN.

The following conditions must apply:
1. “the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means”
2. “damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.”

Let’s review these broad conditions in a realistic light. Well, an IP is not a person and through experience with networks, one would know that an IP cannot represent a location either. What this means is that any person using the internet is already concealing their location through technological means. That means a judge can technically give the power to law enforcement to search and seize any person’s computer/electronic devices, anywhere in the world without any cause, since the cause is so broad that anyone using a computer would fall under as such. Make no mistake – this ambiguous wording is intentional. Understanding the importance of unambiguous wording is supposed to be the core part of a judge’s job. This is the same Chief Justice that fudged President Obama’s Presidential Oath of Office back in 2013. Messing up 2 out of 35 words of an oath that every judge has probably practiced in front of the mirror countless times, just has to be intentional. Like I said, the ambiguous wording in the Rule 41 update is there to be abused.

Illegal Search and Seizure On Your Computer

Judges, by the very nature of this “update” to Rule 41, will grant warrants on foreign targets, not to mention US citizens that have US constitutional rights. Illegal search and seizure is protected against by countries around the world. Usually, they’re protecting their citizens (or offering a semblance of recourse for after the fact) from illegal search and seizure from the citizen’s own government. The fact of the matter is that most countries can’t and/or won’t protect their own citizens from this probing by all the American three letter agencies.

Basic applications of the 4th amendment have been tested again and again in states across the Union. Due process is stressed when law enforcement does their work because many, many criminals have walked free because overzealous LE mishandled evidence or acquired evidence by illegal means. More common than not, the initial seizure of the citizen in question, which even a brief detainment counts as, needs to be justified. This is why you don’t need to provide your driver’s license to border patrol checkpoints, though it’s always a hoot to explain constitutional law to government employees. There are only a few people in the country that have tried to stand against this age-old test of America’s freedom, and Chief Justice John Roberts is one of them. In oral arguments for Utah v Strieff, Roberts revealed that he didn’t believe that allowing police to detain (seize the person of) anybody for no reason would be fine. Since the search that follows a legal detainment (say of an arrestee’s pockets where a pipe is found) is perfectly legal for the officer to do, since he or she needs to look for weapons… Evidence from such a ridiculous search and seizure should be allowable.

It is not really a surprise that Chief Justice Roberts has brought his backwards and provincial views on privacy, search and seizure, and the US Constitution to the Internet Age. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Don’t fuck the internet up.

The post Dear Chief Justice John Roberts, Search and Seizure: Does Innocence Matter? appeared first on Privacy News Online by Private Internet Access VPN.

Join the EFF against Rule 41

To combat this egregious overstep of government power, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has organized a day of action today June, 21, 2016, to push for public debate on this proposed change to law enforcement’s hacking capabilities. As a special sustaining supporter of the EFF’s work, Private Internet Access stands strong with the EFF in this Day of Action. Make no mistake, the potential new powers of the United States government allows it to easily get a warrant to breach a suspected computer anywhere in the world.

The proposed change has been passed from the Supreme Court and will go into effect in December unless the United States Congress acts against it. To help, US residents should send an email to your representative in Congress via this form provided by the EFF. Non US residents can still spread the word over the internet because this overexertion of power has far reaching, international consequences. Laws like this cannot be made by non-elected officials precisely because they cannot be held accountable to the citizens they supposedly serve. Join the EFF to strike down the proposed Rule 41 update – it is an affront to our privacy.

The post Join the EFF against the Rule 41 update which lets federal judges unconstitutionally hack you appeared first on Privacy News Online by Private Internet Access VPN.