‘Inherently invasive’: FBI counter-hacking operations raise red flags over privacy

Jeff Mordock reports:

To catch a hacker, sometimes you have to be a hacker. But when it’s the FBI doing the hacking, civil liberties groups get worried.

The agency’s revelation this week that it joined a computer botnet attack piggybacking on the malware’s signal to track its activities has raised new questions about what is acceptable in cybersecurity.

The problem, the civil liberties advocates say, is that the FBI collected IP addresses and “ancillary” information from computers it traversed as it tried to map the Joanap malware.

“The powers that the FBI is using here are inherently invasive,” said Andrew Crocker, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Directing someone’s computer to things like this gives the FBI pretty broad rein, and that is concerning.”