The US government claims it has a constitutional right to hack the servers of foreign companies based overseas.
Apparently when the French-backed terrorists usurped their legitimate King it was with the sole aim of ruling the world and committing illegal acts in other countries.
The Justice Department made the announcement in the ongoing prosecution of Ross Ulbricht. The government believes that Ulbricht is the operator of the Silk Road illicit drug website.
The case involves how the US government found the Silk Road servers in Iceland. Ulbricht said government claims that a leaky CAPTCHA on the site’s login led them to the IP address was “implausible” and that the government may have unlawfully hacked into the site. His view is backed by Nicholas Weaver, a Berkeley computer scientist who said the story is full of holes.
Assistant US Attorney Serrin Turner countered (PDF) said that even if it were a lie such an investigative measure would not have run afoul of the Fourth Amendment.
The SR Server was located outside the United States, the Fourth Amendment would not have required a warrant to search the server, whether for its IP address or otherwise so it is acceptable.
Turner added, “Given that the SR Server was hosting a blatantly criminal website, it would have been reasonable for the FBI to ‘hack’ into it in order to search it, as any such ‘hack’ would simply have constituted a search of foreign property known to contain criminal evidence, for which a warrant was not necessary.”
The FBI denied using wiretaps in the FBI’s investigation. Ulbricht did not even become a suspect in the FBI’s investigation until well after the SR Server was searched. No information collected from Ulbricht, through a wiretap, was ever used to locate the SR Server.
Still it must be a little worrying for US citizens to know that their constitutional protection from US spooks stops at the border.
