(credit: Stephen Melkisethian)

Earlier this year, a new Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure was amended, after three years of study, by an unelected advisory committee and signed by the US Supreme Court. It allows judges to sign warrants to allow the authorities to hack into computers outside a judge’s jurisdiction. Rule 41 also grants judges the power to use one warrant to search multiple computers anywhere, instead of requiring warrants for each computer. Absent the rule, federal judges may only authorize electronic searches within their own judicial district.

While this may seem bureaucratic or like a technicality, in practice the new rule will have a big impact on investigating cybercrime, according to the Justice Department. Evidence has been suppressed in some child pornography prosecutions because a Virginia magistrate allowed the FBI to seize and operate the Tor-hidden site Playpen for 13 days. Investigators also deployed malware that disrupted Tor’s privacy protections and revealed more than 1,000 true IP addresses, which led to 137 prosecutions nationwide. In a few of those prosecutions, judges tossed cases because of the jurisdiction rule that Rule 41 now cures.