Federal law enforcement officials do not keep track of how often courts approve requests to infect Internet users with malware in order to track down suspects, the department claimed in a court filing this month.
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“The Department of Justice does not maintain a central and complete listing of instances in which, in the course of an investigation, DOJ, any of its components, or any other federal law enforcement agency (such as the Department of Homeland Security) sought and/or received judicial authorization” to use “network investigative techniques,” attorneys for Justice wrote.
“NITs allow investigators to ascertain information from a computer on which the NIT runs such as the Internet Protocol address of the computer despite attempts by the computer user to obscure that information,” the filing explains. “This resource has served as a valuable tool in an array of criminal investigations.”
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The document was submitted to the court on April 1, but first reported by Motherboard on Thursday. It comes as part of a “dark web” sting on a child pornography site known as “Playpen.” The FBI deployed a so-called NIT to identify more than 4,000 visitors to the site, but a federal judge this month ordered that evidence suppressed, stating that one warrant could not be legally sufficient for the FBI to infect thousands of computers with malware.
In a statement, the Justice Department called for the Supreme Court to clarify rules on the issue, “to ensure that criminals using sophisticated anonymizing technologies to conceal their identities while they engage in crime over the Internet are able to be identified and apprehended.”
