A United States District Court Judge has ruled that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) use of malware without a warrant to capture details of those viewing child pornography in the infamous “Playpen” case was unconstitutional.

Judge David Alan Ezra ruled that the use of malware was considered search under the fourth amendment which is meant to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures and therefore the malware required a warrant.

Saving the case for the FBI, the Judge did not throw out the evidence reports The Daily Caller as he contended that the FBI did not purposefully violate the Fourth Amendment; the ruling followed a request to have evidence gathered thrown out by attorneys for Jeffrey Torres, one of the men caught through the use of the malware.

If you’ve missed this ongoing joke of a case so far, the FBI seized “Playpen”, a site described as one of the internet’s largest child pornography sites with 215,000 registered users in February 2015, but instead of closing the site it decided to keep it running on its own servers in an effort to identify and prosecute its users.

As users to Playpen were using the anonymous Tor network to access the site, the FBI installed tracking malware on the computers of those visiting the site to allow them to try to identify who the visitors were.

Keystone cops

While the FBI has gotten very, very lucky in still being able to use the evidence gathered, at least in the case of Jeffrey Torres, this isn’t the first setback for the FBI following its decision to run its own child pornography site, a beyond dubious decision to begin with.

The FBI did originally obtain a warrant but it was obtained in a court that didn’t have jurisdiction outside of its own district, meaning that warrant was ruled invalid back in April; The FBI then subsequently claimed in this case that they didn’t need the warrant to begin with, which is beyond bizarre.

While there is rightfully zero sympathy at all for those who view child pornography, there’s little here for the FBI either who not only hosted and served up child porn to deviants but acted as incompetent Keystone cops while they did so.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain CC0