It's a tragic precedent that is the result of decades of technical debt. Of course I'm not at all surprised to learn that the feds would rather take more unchecked power for themselves than use their mouthpieces to pressure Congress into forcing an industry wide focus on security that has teeth. From top to bottom the internet of things needs to be redesigned to treat every port and every communicated bit as potentially hostile. In the current state of affairs it is not outside the realm of possibilities for a lone actor to use a few RCEs in Windows, *nix, android and iPhones to brick billions of devices overnight. We should be glad that terrorists and nation states are using 0 days with relative discretion for profit and reputation protection instead of destroying critical infrastructure that would take in the range of years to decades to rebuild. I fear that our generation is going to have to learn this lesson the same way the Japanese learned about the horrors of nuclear bombs. Shit. Imagine if stuxnet had been given the capabilities to smoke CPUs, RAM, HDDs or anything else it could get write access to, like water pumps, or pressure regulators.

> Of course I'm not at all surprised to learn that the feds would rather take more unchecked power for themselves than use their mouthpieces to pressure Congress into forcing an industry wide focus on security that has teeth.

I'm not sure this was an exercise of unchecked power, they got a warrant. I'm also not sure that the FBI has the ability to tell congress what legislation should or should not be enacted. To me, congress seems to be more beholden to their constituents around election time, then lobbyists and the rest of their party the rest of the time.

Yes, internet security sucks, but that is the world that we and the FBI find ourselves in. Legislation to fix that fact is somewhat plausible but I don't see it being that simple to enact. Security has always been about making a decision that balances risk with the amount of resources it takes to mitigate security risks. Sure, we could push towards perfect security with legislation, but productivity of companies and the economy will take a large hit and I don't see that as something that legislators can push for and expect to be elected again in the future.

Again, yes, our internet security sucks and that is the world we live in. A nation state actor infiltrated the networks of thousands of companies in the united states. The FBI is charged with protecting the citizens of the united states. I'm sure there are a few not so great members of the FBI, but the majority truly believe in fighting to protect our citizens. They followed the law and got a warrant for this action, and assuming they kept their word about what they would and would not touch, they took actions to kick those bad actors off systems of companies in the united states. If a nation state invaded a few thousand residences of our citizens, I would expect nothing less than FBI swat teams going in and solving the issue.

Given the stained, with the blood of innocents, history of law enforcement in the USA I'm infinitely skeptical of every action they take that sets new precedent for expansions of their powers. I recognize the need for law enforcement and largely support those involved, however they have earned their reputation with decades of bad decisions and will continue to be the subject of criticism, condemnation, and distrust until they can find it within themselves to relinquish unnecessary powers, right their wrongs, modernize their culture, and prosecute the numerous bad actors in their ranks.

As far as warrants go, I don't expect anything with "national security implications" to be denied, ever. Have you heard of the fisa court?

>11 denied requests out of around 34,000 granted in 35 years – equivalent to 0.03%

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...

I'm not saying we need to burn down the internet and start over. But couldn't we toss 5-10 billion a year to leaders in the software world to design a secure os and hardware from first principles? Is humanity too vulnerable to individual whims like greed and lust for power ends prestige to accomplish such a feat? This country landed a person on the moon with computers less powerful than my cell phone, or laptop. We made the atomic bomb. Humanity is up to the task, I believe our leaders have lost their way and this article is more evidence of that.

Not quite the same. If someone installs a hidden microphone in my house, or a multi keyed lock (where they have a working copy) I really expect the Police to ask me before they come in my house to remove the offending equipment or change my lock for me.

If they come in the house uninvited then all they achieve is make me lose trust in them. I'll just start wondering how long until they abuse this and do it whenever it suits them, not me, if they're not doing it already.

I'm not sure it was exactly analogous to a microphone or a different lock in the physical world. The bad actors installed reverse shells, the shells could have been sitting idle, but they could have also have been in active use by the bad actors. In the physical world, cops have exigent circumstance rules that would allow them to go inside a residence in cases like that. Their first priority isn't normally making sure that the home owner won't be annoyed. But in this case, the fbi obtained a warrant since this is a gray zone.

Yes, it would have been more courteous of them to have notified people before they took the action, but the notifications could have prompted evasive actions by the bad actors if those notifications went public.

I doubt the fbi had sinister intentions about abusing anyone's rights. These were nation state bad actors, not just some kid in Virginia. If they kept their word about what they would and would not touch in the warrant, then I don't see why it's so bad that they proactively protect their citizens. China has had free reign to hack our businesses and it seems good to me that our government is standing up for those businesses and trying to help them some.

There's no perfect analogy between the real world and the digital one. This being said you're misconstruing the situation to make the "but terrorists" and "think of the children" argument. I've lived long enough to see people parrot the same claims over and over again, changing only the $enemy_of_the_day. What you have in those servers are the criminals' tools. The FBI went there to remove the tools, not the criminals.

So sure, if the Police sees a criminal in my house about to shoot me, walk right in, please. But I don't want them sneaking in without my explicit consent or a warrant to remove a gun left under my couch by a criminal.

I can easily turn the exact arguments you're using into supporting backdooring encryption. Or pretty much any "proactive" move that will "stop the Chinese". No amount of rationalizing will change the fact that you shouldn't force these "favors" on anyone. Pass a law that mandates something to the same effect to be implemented by the owners themselves, or by the vendor, once informed of the risk, under the threat of penalties if they don't.

> What you have in those servers are the criminals' tools. The FBI went there to remove the tools, not the criminals.

It was a reverse shell, they removed shell access that the criminals could use to do whatever they want on the affected servers. Yes, no one is actually inside of the servers that they are working on, but if you have a shell inside of a given server and are connected to it, I would consider you inside that server.

> So sure, if the Police sees a criminal in my house about to shoot me, walk right in, please. But I don't want them sneaking in without my explicit consent or a warrant to remove a gun left under my couch by a criminal.

Right, they did indeed have a signed warrant to perform these actions before they performed them.

> can easily turn the exact arguments you're using into supporting backdooring encryption.

To me, this and similar stuff like backdoor encryption are incredibly hard to solve because both sides of the argument make valid points. The law enforcement community are not all dumb luddites grasping for power for their own sinister means. They fight legitimate monsters and a lot of them only care about fighting those monsters. At the same time, the opposing argument that adding back doors and other similar things are extremely detrimental to security for the population at large. It is a trade off with no compromise that is acceptable to both parties at the same time.

> This being said you're misconstruing the situation to make the "but terrorists" and "think of the children" argument.

We live in a world with bad nation state actors, why exactly is it wrong to make the argument that there are bad actors that do bad things to a small minority of the population and that fighting those things is good? I don't think anyone would say that those bad nation state actors do not exist and are not doing bad things to companies in the United States. The intellectual thievery against companies in the United States is real and it has happened numerous times and is not some conspiracy theory peddled by law enforcement so that they can grab more power.

> Or pretty much any "proactive" move that will "stop the Chinese". No amount of rationalizing will change the fact that you shouldn't force these "favors" on anyone. Pass a law that mandates something to the same effect to be implemented by the owners themselves, or by the vendor, once informed of the risk, under the threat of penalties if they don't.

What exactly was wrong with the actions taken by the FBI that you so vehemently oppose? Do you really think that there was a single one the affected companies that would have rather left the reverse shells in place just because someone in the FBI running a script against their server to remove that shell would make them uncomfortable? The FBI are not legislators, they cannot pass laws to prompt companies to clean up those reverse shells. I highly doubt that their actions had sinister motives and the most likely occam's razer solution is that they were just trying to do a good thing for their country.

Sure, there could be a world where our laws are on the libertarian end of the spectrum where law enforcement officers don't come near the line that makes people uncomfortable. However, that route will have numerous trade offs that a lot of society will not like. Law enforcement has to tread a fine line where they prohibit bad actors from doing bad things so that society can live and prosper while at the same time not doing stasi-like stuff that will suffocate and control society. This issue and others like it are not black and white, both sides have valid points and tipping completely to either end of the spectrum completely doesn't seem like the best route. Their actions in this case don't seem too stasi-like to me.