Forrester Opinion Amended

The Ninth Circuit amended the opinion in U.S. v. Forrester to limit the scope of circumstances when the FBI can collect electronic information generated by a target.  The FBI got email addresses, web URLs visited, along with telephone numbers dialed.  The Court had equated this with the same kind of data collecting as with a traditional pen register case.  Since then, the word broke on the CIPAV program used by the Bureau which is essentially spyware.  The Court issued an addendum noting that the surveillance took place through connections at the local ISP office, with a warrant having been issued.  This is consistent with the analysis the Court used to justify the similarities in the types of surveillance techniques.

The amended opinion is here.  The story in Ars Technica is here.