Playpen Pros And Cons

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Recently, a federal court in Virginia ruled that the FBI doesn’t need a warrant to hack your computer. Their argument is that a defendant has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” about his personal computer. This gives the FBI the privilege to hack into anybody’s computer even if they don’t have probable cause. To understand I will talk about the event that led to this ruling. In 2014, the FBI seized control of the site Playpen. Playpen was a child pornography site. The FBI continued to operate the site and gave anyone who visited the site malware that logged your computers information. This led to many arrests of people who used the site. Personally, I think these arrests are very good, but the methods are not. However, you can argue that …show more content…

I believe that a personal computer inside a house should have an expectation of privacy. The Judges argued that since computers are hacked everyday that there is no expectation of privacy. The same argument could be made against houses. People break into houses everyday but there is still an expectation of privacy. If the police can hack into everybody’s computer without a warrant, it would be the same as the police being able to search peoples houses without probable cause. Its not just people who don’t agree with the ruling. A Massachusetts court found that the FBI’s evidence was invalid due to it relying on a warrant that was did not apply to the …show more content…

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. When the FBI wiretapped a conversation in order to arrest people for illegal gambling without a warrant the Supreme Court ruled that they had an expectation of privacy and that law enforcement must have a warrant to wiretap. Their decision was based off when you say something to the public it is not protected by the 4th amendment, but when you try to keep it private even if it is in a public place it is protected. I think the solution is that the Supreme Court should make a decision based off their previous ruling because the defendants kept it private and even took additional measures to make sure no one else knew, like masking their IP address by using