
Court Rebukes DOJ, Says Hacking Required to Be Prosecuted as Hacker - sakai
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/computer-fraud-and-abuse-act/
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rhizome
Between this and the SOPA/PIPA/etc. pushes, you can tell the US Government
_WANTS SO BADLY_ to dictate the boundaries of the free Internet. It brings up
the old bit, "you can tell you're free because this is what freedom looks
like."

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tptacek
No they don't. The world does not break down a conviently dramatic good-guy
bad-guy narrative. It's much more boring.

What the DoJ wants is an easy, flexible statutory framework that will let them
shortcut prosecutions in cases like this, where you have a clear bad-actor for
whom non-CFAA cases would be complicated and expensive to pursue. Remember,
the guy who evaded CFAA prosecution in this article isn't a hero. (Read the
whole article for the [strictly white collar] criminality he's accused of, but
fair warning: it's boring white collar stuff).

 _That doesn't make the DoJ right_. It probably shouldn't be super easy for
them to make complex cases simply by citation to computer terms of service.
But it also doesn't _automatically_ signal the intention of every single
government entity to take over the "free Internet".

An extremely excellent study of the issues at play in defining "abuse" and
"unauthorized access":

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=399740>

Strongly recommend reading the whole thing. It covers a giant swath of almost
any computer-based legal drama likely to hit HN.

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orangecat
_What the DoJ wants is an easy, flexible statutory framework that will let
them shortcut prosecutions in cases like this, where you have a clear bad-
actor for whom non-CFAA cases would be complicated and expensive to pursue._

This fails to reassure me.

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tptacek
Fails to reassure you of what? I can't help feeling like you stopped reading
at that sentence.

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orangecat
You say it's not good vs evil, and that the government's goal isn't to cripple
the Internet, but "just" to bypass due process so they can easily convict
people they "know" are guilty. If anything I find your scenario even worse;
it's approaching the cartoon villains in Atlas Shrugged ("there's no way to
rule innocent men").

~~~
tptacek
I'm going to play this "Not Arguing Law With People Who Are Especially
Conversant With Ayn Rand" card I had conveniently saved for just such an
occasion.

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sakai
Prior relevant reporting: [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/anti-
hacking-law-to...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/anti-hacking-law-
too-broad/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous)

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ericHosick
Technology created the Internet and, as such, technology is really the only
thing to make it safe from "hacking".

Laws are abstract concepts easily broken: especially by those who write them.
Laws have never assured security (and that goes for things beyond just the
internet).

