I am not a lawyer, and my understanding of what I have read is constrained by the relative inexperience I bring to it. However, I would encourage anyone who fe

I am not a lawyer, and my understanding of what I have read is constrained by the relative inexperience I bring to it. However, I would encourage anyone who felt strongly about this matter to read through the reasoning of the actual decision [1], rather than relying upon the characterization presented by the tech dirt article. The techdirt article somehow manages to fail to see an entire forest due to the presence of a singular tree. The judge in this instance presents a laundry list of overlapping of reasons for denying the defendant's motion. The truth is that the FBI investigators did not "hack without a warrant" in this instance, let alone without probable cause in the specific case of this defendant, and by the presented evidence appears to have given ample diligence to observing that the triggering conditions of the warrant were applicable. The defence is advancing a theory that has the transmission of the defendant's IP over HTTP rather than HTTPS as a central complaint, plus the possibility that the FBI malware could have been insecure so as allow a malicious third party to falsely implicate to defendant. It is on this basis that they feel the source code of the malware should be entered into evidence. It is the opinion of the judge that the defence has failed to establish any basis under which he might be convinced that the facts "sufficiently advanced the quantum of evidence" (whatever that is, really) so that a examination of a theory advanced by the defence warrants treatment as a possibility rather than a speculative hypothesis. He reiterates many times that the defence has made no attempt to perform a forensic investigation of the defendant's computer or establish any reason external to speculation that might give credence to their theory. This appears to be a basic standard of admissibility. This is the context in which the judge brings up the theory that there is not a reasonable expectation to privacy adherent to the use of an IP address, which I find to be completely amazing. I do not understand how he comes by that belief. But to say that the judge has "ruled" this to be the case, as the tech dirt article does, might put you at risk of asserting a fallacious belief that appeared to be factually ignorant. I do not know if this assertion on the judge's part grants a greater legal factuality to the argument, absent as it may be, were it to be later cited by others. I hope not. However, I can say that the ruling that the judge has made by no means comes anywhere close to relying upon the truth of this in arriving at his decision to reject the motion of the defendant. He is not simply reporting sufficient reason to rule against the defendant's request; instead, it seems he has felt inspired to list every single way in which every aspect of the reasoning they present to justify such a motion is (in his view) thoroughly and utterly without merit. [1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2897490/Matish-Order.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2897490/Matish-Or...