This order has come despite the fact that civil liberties group were opposing the new rule, calling it an enormous increase in the FBI’s hacking power.
The new rules have now been transmitted to the Congress, which can modify or reject the changes until December 1. If the Congress decides to leave the new rule untouched, it’ll take effect automatically. It should be noted that Congress rarely exercises its powers.
This rule change was being pushed by the U.S. Justice Department since 2013. The Department called it a little change that was needed to modernize the criminal code for the new digital age.
The privacy advocacy groups and technology giants like Google have called the new changes unreasonable that’ll allow the FBI to hack millions of devices with a single warrant. The privacy groups also call it a blatant violation of people’s constitutional right against search and seizure.
It’s interesting to note that this quest of the Justice Department to gain more powers hasn’t attracted the level of attention received by the tussle between Apple and FBI.
Talking in favor of this change, a Justice Department spokesman said that such changes are the need of the current hour as criminals are using the anonymizing techniques to hide their identity and remote searches are sometimes the only way to catch the suspects.
