The FBI as an ethical hacker?

More details are emerging about how the FBI engages in hacking and the planting of spyware.

This story goes back to at least 2001 when Bob Sullivan of MSNBC and Ted Birdis of AP broke the story of Magic Lantern. At the time the FBI did not want to say much, but now there is real information that clears up some things and reinforces real concerns over this approach.

Law enforcement is faced with some very hard problems when it tries to find and get evidence on bad guys. There are a lot of tools that you and I can use to make the Internet safer when doing business on the 'Net or to protect our privacy if we need to blow the whistle on someone or communicate with a support group. You should be using encryption on your own computer so that your personal or business records are not compromised if your computer is stolen. You can use anonymizing proxies or anonymizing networks  if you are a dissident living in a repressive society or would like to visit a mental health support group. These are important tools when used by the good guys, but make life harder for law enforcement when used by the bad guys.

Though note that both of these technologies are far too important to give up just to make law enforcement's job easier.

Still, law enforcement needs to overcome tools of this type if they are to catch the people they are after. This is where Magic Lantern, and its less prosaically named successor, "Computer & Internet Protocol Address Verifier" (CIPAV), come in. These systems are officially sanctioned spyware, theoretically only used when permitted by the courts (in the United States at least).

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