Rule 41: Last week, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden took the floor in the Senate to explain why the Stopping Mass Hacking Act should be passed.
The bill, consisting of a few sentences, aims to prevent the acceptance of amendments brought by Rule 41 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which was approved by the United States Supreme Court earlier this year.
But what is article 41, and what changes are we talking about?
Article 41 of the US Code of Criminal Procedure defines, among other things, what judges can and cannot do when granting search and seizure warrants online.
“Currently, Section 41 only allows federal judges to issue search warrants only in the judicial district where each judge is located,” the EFF.
“The new Article 41 could for the first time give judges the authority to issue warrants when technological means, such as Tor or virtual private networks (VPNs), conceal the location of a computer. Under these circumstances, warrants would be approved to remotely access, search, seize, or even copy data from computers, which may be located anywhere in the world.”
In addition to that, the law could also give “a judge the authority to issue single warrants that would give jurisdiction to search many, possibly thousands or millions of devices,” Senator Wyden.
The Rule 41 amendments will take effect on December 1, 2016, unless Congress does something to stop it.
Who is against changes?
The proposed changes run counter to the views of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Tor Project, Privacy International, security researchers, and some bipartisan U.S. senators. Of course, there are many others who are opposed, and a campaign is currently underway to mobilize public opinion to pressure Congress.
Wyden and security researchers like Matt Blaze and Susan Landau were among the first to express their opposition to Wired, citing concerns they have about the upcoming changes.
