As the controversy surrounding the extent of civilian surveillance conducted by government agencies retain to rage , Motherboardhas free detail of an “ unprecedented ” hacking campaign that   see the FBI spy on over 1,000 computers as part of a crackdown on child pornography . While the ultimate objective of the operation will be welcomed by many , the tactics employ have actuate a number of business concern .

The grim touch - theme for the debate over the U.S. government ’s trespass on civilian ’ privacy was lit byEdward Snowdenin 2013 , and has never been far from the headline since the former CIA employee leaked classified documents regarding the natural process of the National Security Agency ( NSA ) . On the one hand , these operations have been set on for being to a fault - incursive , although others have pointed to the necessity of government surveillance for nationalsecurity purpose .

For example , the FBI ’s employment of spyware software called acomputer and cyberspace communications protocol address verifier(CIPAV ) has enabled the bureau to frustrate a number of potential attacks , and was widely reported to have played a vital role in trackingbomb threatssent to a Washington country high school in 2007 . However , the scale of the latest campaign far exceeds all former known surveillance functioning .

The effort was project to catch users of a child porno website bid Playpen , which launched in 2014 usingTorsoftware . This purportedly enables anonymous communication by diverting cyberspace traffic through a complicated internet of global relay , get users untraceable . However , in February 2015 , law enforcement officials seized the calculator waiter that   was running the site in Lenoir , North Carolina .

Rather than shutting down the site , the FBI took over the server and allowed it to continue run , while implementing a hack tool fuck as a web investigative technique ( NIT ) . The bureau did so after obtaining a imprimatur for the NIT , the precise particular of which have not made public . However , Christopher Soghoian , principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union , told Motherboard that the nature of the license would have resulted in “ the government hack on chiliad of computers , pursuant to a individual imprimatur . ”

The exact stipulation of the NIT used by the FBI are not known , although court documents reviewed by Motherboard have bring out that the software enabled the agency to incur information such as users ’ IP speech , operating system username , Mac address and Host Name .

These documents point that “ approximately 1,300 genuine internet protocol ( IP ) addresses were identify , ”   although federal public protector Colin Fieman told Motherboard that the number may in fact be gamey than 1,500 .

Several Playpen exploiter have beencriminally chargedas a verbatim upshot of this operation , indicate the potential of this type of spyware to help the sureness clamp down on child pornography . However , it has also attracted critics , with Soghoian pointing out that the sequence marks a “ scarey new frontier of surveillance . ”

[ H / T : Motherboard ]