Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Thursday introduced a bill that would block an expansion of the Justice Department’s hacking powers.
“When the public realizes what is at stake, I think there is going to be a massive outcry: Americans will look at Congress and say, ‘What were you thinking?’” Wyden wrote in a Medium post announcing the legislation.
{mosads}The DOJ has proposed amendments to a little-known criminal procedure rule that would take effect in December and expand their hacking powers unless Congress acts.
Wyden’s one-page bill, the Stopping Mass Hacking Act, would prevent those changes to what’s known as Rule 41.
The changes would allow judges to grant a single warrant for multiple electronic searches in different locations — even when investigators don’t know the physical location of a device.
The feds argue broader search powers are needed keep pace with the rapidly progressing technology that criminals use to mask their identities online.
But civil liberties advocates — and some tech companies — are horrified by the proposal. Allowing multi-district, multi-computer searches, they say, would allow the government to conduct bulk hacking with very little oversight.
“By allowing so many searches with the order of just a single judge, Congress’s failure to act on this issue would be a disaster for law-abiding Americans,” Wyden said Thursday.
Allowing the government to seek a single warrant for multiple computers affected by or implicated in a computer attack, he argues, would mean that “the government will be treating victims of hacking the same way they treat the perpetrators.”
Moreover, he argues, because federal investigators are so secretive about how they conduct computer searches, the changes could conceivably result in unchecked Fourth Amendment violations.
“If a victim’s Fourth Amendment rights are violated, it might not be readily apparent because of the highly technical nature of the methods used to execute the warrant,” Wyden wrote.
According to the Center on Democracy and Technology, which opposes the change, there are around 500 million computers that would be impacted by the rule change.
Although the Justice Department has cast the amendment as a simple procedural change that doesn’t impact the standards judges must meet to issue a search warrant, Wyden argued that the changes are significant enough that they should be the purview of Congress.
“It is Congress’ job to make sure we do not let the Executive Branch run roughshod over our constituents’ rights,” Wyden wrote. “Although the Department of Justice has tried to describe this rule change as simply a matter of judicial venue, sometimes a difference in scale really is a difference in kind.”
The bill received immediate praise from members of the communications industry.
“While the government argues the updates are merely procedural, the use and consequences of these techniques have never received appropriate public and Congressional review,” said Ed Black, CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association.
Wyden is joined by several co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, including Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.).