Good Faith Beats Bad Warrant In Another Win For FBI's World-Traversing NIT Malware

Good Faith Beats Bad Warrant In Another Win For FBI's World-Traversing NIT Malware

6 years ago
Anonymous $v9r5mEH86V

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180221/20161739280/good-faith-beats-bad-warrant-another-win-fbis-world-traversing-nit-malware.shtml

Another challenge of the NIT (Network Investigative Technique) warrant used by the FBI during its investigation of a dark web child porn website has hit the appellate level. A handful of district courts have found the warrant used invalid, given the fact that its reach (worldwide) exceeded its jurisdictional grasp (the state of Virginia, where it was obtained). That hasn't had much of an effect on appeals court rulings, which have all found the warrant questionable to varying degrees, but have granted the FBI "good faith" for violating the jurisdictional limits the DOJ was attempting to have rewritten (Rule 41 -- which governs warrant jurisdictional limits, among other things) to allow it to do the things it was already doing.

Even though the FBI had to have known searches performed all over the world using one Virginia-based warrant violated Rule 41 limits, appellate judges have declared the FBI agent requesting the warrant wasn't enough of a legal expert to know this wasn't allowed. Two appeals courts have stated suppressing the evidence is pointless because the law changed after the jurisdiction limit violation took place. The appellate decisions have been troubling to say the least, providing further evidence that the good faith exception is the rule, rather than the outlier.