Unsealed Warrant Shows FBI Malware Affected Innocent Tor Users While Agency Ran More Than 20 Child Porn Sites

 Thanks to the ACLU's push to unseal documents related to the FBI's targeting of TorMail users and Freedom Hosting, the warrant affidavits supporting its NIT deployment have been released by the agency. Joseph Cox of Motherboard reports:

    In 2013, the FBI received permission to hack over 300 specific users of dark web email service TorMail. But now, after the warrants and their applications have finally been unsealed, experts say the agency illegally went further, and hacked perfectly legitimate users of the privacy-focused service.

    “That is, while the warrant authorized hacking with a scalpel, the FBI delivered their malware to TorMail users with a grenade,” Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in an email.

The 99-page affidavit [PDF] is lightly-redacted but contains some completely uncensored and surprising admissions from the agency. Contrary to its post-release statements about the scope of the "narrowly-tailored" warrant not being exceeded, the actual contents show the deployment of the NIT to unmask Tor users is much more aligned with Soghoian's "grenade" description.