Rep. Zoe Lofgren Plans To Introduce 'Aaron's Law' To Stop Bogus Prosecutions Under The CFAA
from the one-step dept
There's been talk for years about fixing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which has been widely abused by law enforcement/prosecutors to claim that basically any use of a computer that did not fall under the explicitly allowed uses was a form of "computer hacking" -- and potentially a felony. This allowed for law enforcement to go after all sorts of people -- including anyone who did anything on a computer that their employer didn't like. Or anyone whosent spam. Or anyone who reported on a data vulnerability. Or anyone who just senta too many emails. These and many more cases mostly revolved around a stretched interpretation of the (outdated) CFAA, which suggested that simply violating a terms of service was the equivalent of "unauthorized access," and thus a "hacking" violation. Courts have so far been somewhat split on this interpretation, with some buying it and others not buying it at all.The abuse of the CFAA has been seen in some high profile cases, including the one against Lori Drew, after a young girl, who was a friend of Drew's daughter, killed herself following a "dispute" with a fake profile of a boy that was really set up by Drew and some others. The court eventually tossed that out (though a jury convicted her). But it seems tragically ironic that a law that prosecutors once used (they claimed) to go after someone for bullying someone to commit suicide, is now itself being blamed for prosecutors' own bullying tactics, which many (including his parents) now insist led to the suicide of Aaron Swartz.
Congress has approved fixes for the CFAA in the past, but they've never made it all the way into law. The unfortunate, untimely and tragic death of Aaron Swartz may have brought back politicians' interest in making such a fix. Rep. Zoe Lofgren announced on Reddit her plans to introduce "Aaron's Law" to fix one glaring weakness in the CFAA: the idea that any terms of service violation is akin to hacking and fraud under the law. The draft bill rejects such an interpretation explicitly:
Section 1343 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the first sentence the following: ‘‘A violation of an agreement or contractual obligation regarding Internet or computer use, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, Internet website, or employer is not in itself a violation of this section.’’Hopefully, this new Congress can look at the unfortunate situation with Aaron (and many others) and how prosecutors are using the CFAA as a weapon to browbeat people they don't like into guilty pleas on garbage charges, and finally pass this much needed fix to the CFAA.
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Filed Under: aaron swartz, cfaa, computer fraud and abuse act, zoe lofgren
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My confidence in a Congress writing a law to "protect" was lost in 1976.
Learn from this. Correct, not replace.
PLEASE.
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Read the bill above. All it does is correct the CFAA.
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I just want to make sure this isn't adding "exceptions" rather than correcting the law's problematic and very, very generic definitions.
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Ok I hear ya. I hear ya....
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1- Does this law produce more harm than good?
2- Does this law use vague terms that could be misinterpreted and abused by the Government/whoever?
3- Does this law allow any sort of conflict with the Constitutional rights?
4- Does this law allow any sort of abuse AT ALL?
5- Does this law include a DATE FOR MANDATORY REVIEW?
We just need sensible people willing to do this reviewing (and possibly extinction of some of them).
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Laws are already reviewed according to strict criteria
1. Does this law produce more harm than good for my campaign donors?
2. Does this law use vague terms that could be misinterpreted and abused by the government to the detriment of my campaign donors?
3. Does this law allow any sort of conflict with my campaign donors?
4. Does this law prevent any sort of abuse that my campaign donors may wish to engage in?
5. Does this law include a date that it will be voted on, and have my campaign donors paid me in advance of that date?
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Re: Laws are already reviewed according to strict criteria
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Certainly not the bought and paid for politicians in D.C.!
They have repeatedly shown that they are incapable of understanding the problem, let alone writing legislation to actually address the problem.
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I agree that most such laws tend to be bad...
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Passing new laws as a PR stunt post-tragedy tends to cause more harm than they solve, due to how rushed the process is by people who 'want to do something now', but in this case at least it's more fixing the problem that caused, or at least enabled, the tragedy in the first place, and that I have no trouble with at all.
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USA Patriot act
National Defense Authorization Act
At least this time the bill would actually represent its namesake.
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"dispute"
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Re: "dispute"
Only about half (or less) of the ten commandements now attract punishment in most western countries.
Moving away from punishing every wrongdoing as a crime is generally s step forward in civilisation.
For example most people would certainly associate some guilt with adultery - but wouyld not regard it as civilised to punish people for it (as they still do in some countries).
So I would (as I suspect that Mike would) associate some guilt with Lori Drew - but I would stop short of using the law against her.
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Re: "dispute"
Some might say that your need to blame a second party for the unfortunate actions of a first party is positively pathological.
It was a sad situation but Drew did not break any laws, and the over-the-top efforts to try and punish her by any means was worse than sad, it was a travesty. Society will ostracise Drew for the rest of her days, there was no need to fabricate a legal issue.
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Irony
It's not a terrible idea. And Aaron Swartz no doubt would have thought it a good step (and perhaps did think that - this proposal was made earlier this year). But it's weird to label it "Aaron's Law".
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This is true, however usually when the victim refuses to press charges, the government usually goes along with their wishes. Most of the time, with no victim, they have no case. Also, in order to prove a crime, they have to prove a number of things, this particular case would have fallen flat on it's face had it gone to court.
Your analogy with DUI is completely different. Police are free to charge anyone with DUI without their having to be an accident. The accident would bring other charges separately from the DUI.
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Now, whether or not this law would have helped keep the prosecutor for finding some OTHER Federal Law to harass him with, I don't know, but a correct reading of the events would lead to a correct outcome with this law as I currently understand it.
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To Many Laws
At any given moment, everyone commits a crime without knowing it. More time, money and energy is wasted on micro-managing law enforcement than any other service! including Health Care!.
If we were to some how bring a person from 1920 or even 1860 to 2013, with in 5 minutes, they will have committed 20 years of prison worth of crimes. Imagine if we brought a person from 1000 AD? or 500 BC? Our entire list of ancestors are criminals to today's standards of law.
Humans are not meant to live this way. I hope the next revolution brings us back to something of the equivalent of the ten commandments and leaves it at ten (updated of course to allow everyone to slept with their neighbours :)
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Contract Law
If they just amended contract law to allow 3rd parties harmed by a violation of T&C's to seek restitution.
E.g. Lori Drew wouldn't be jailed, but could be sued by the girls parents; meanwhile JSTOR and MIT decide not to press charges.
Maybe US contract law is already set up like this, I have little experience of it, but if that's the case then this small amendment is all that's needed.
The cynical side of me says that once congress has gone through this amendment it's going to say something like,
Then they'll just re-badge hackers as terrorists. In the UK they do this a lot with photographers and protestors.
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Re: Contract Law
Secondly, sometimes the government does need to be able to prosecute without the express written permission of the victim.
There really are no easy solutions. Much of our trouble these days is the apathy common to all of humanity. I don't have a handy solution for that.
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Re: Contract Law
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writing laws backwards
How about amending (a)(2) so that "information" must be private or restricted information, not just any old information. And let's remove (a)(2)(C) ("information from any protected computer;") because it includes everything.
How about stating very clearly that "authorized" means "what the owner set the computer up to allow" (rather than "what the owner had in mind"). If there isn't a clean way to do that, then maybe the word "authorized" shouldn't be in the law at all.
How about changing "value of the information" to "free market value of the information"-- and if the information is not available in the free market (e.g. if it is under copyright) then it has no such value. Any economic harm must be proved, not just claimed with speculation (I'm looking at you, (a)(4)(A)(i)(I)).
How about defining "damage" as something more than epsilon? Or maybe splitting it out of the law entirely, since it doesn't seem to serve any good purpose.
How about eliminating the "conspiracy" language altogether?
And one of my favorites: How about allowing legal recourse against officials of the Justice Department who abuse the law?
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Re: writing laws backwards
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Has Petraeus been indicted yet?
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Ah, I see your Schwartz is as long as mine....
Okay, a little humor along with the tragedy gets me thru the day...
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Read in a mexican accent.
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