ACLU Files Challenge To CFAA Over Blocking Research Into Discrimination Online
from the fix-the-cfaa dept
There's been a lot of talk lately about the possibility of discrimination being built into the algorithms that determine our lives. In the past year, multiple publications have discussed what happens when algorithms are racist in a time when algorithms decide more and more of our lives. Just recently, we talked about judges using proprietary algorithms in sentencing, and how those algorithms themselves may judge people based on things like skin color. And just a few days ago, there was a fascinating NY Times article about inherent bias in artificial intelligence systems. I even went to a conference recently, where there was a whole discussion on the question of what do you do "if your algorithm is racist." It's not an easy question to answer, honestly, but one thing that we should not be doing is holding back research into these systems.And yet... that's exactly what's happening. And the culprit, once again, is the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA), which we've written about for years. The law, which is woefully out of date, and was passed (literally) by a Congress that was freaked out over the movie WarGames, is supposed to target evil "computer hackers." But it's written so broadly, including terms like "unauthorized access" or "exceeding authorized access," that it's been used against things like violating a terms of service (that you didn't read or even agree to) or against downloading too many files. And that's scaring the hell out of researchers.
Given that, the ACLU has now filed a lawsuit on behalf a group of academic researchers, computer scientists and journalists who want to investigate these issues, but are held back by the CFAA.
Our plaintiffs want to investigate whether websites are discriminating, but they often can’t. Courts and prosecutors have interpreted a provision of the CFAA—one that prohibits individuals from “exceed[ing] authorized access” to a computer—to criminalize violations of websites’ “terms of service.” Terms of service are the rules that govern the relationship between a website and its user and often include, for example, prohibitions on providing false information, creating multiple accounts, or using automated methods of recording publicly available data (sometimes called “scraping”).In terms of the specific challenge, the ACLU is arguing that it violates both the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The crux of the First Amendment argument in the filing:
The problem is that those are the very methods that are necessary to test for discrimination on the internet, and the academics and journalists who want to use those methods for socially valuable research should not have to risk prosecution for using them. The CFAA violates the First Amendment because it limits everyone, including academics and journalists, from gathering the publicly available information necessary to understand and speak about online discrimination.
The Challenged Provision impermissibly burdens speech about business practices and other activity on the internet because websites can determine what speech and expressive activity to prohibit, and these prohibitions become criminal violations of the Challenged Provision. In other words, a website can explicitly target speech or expressive activities. For example, if a website’s terms of service provide that access by certain types of speakers (such as researchers) is unauthorized, or that engaging in certain speech (false or misleading speech, for example, or subsequent disparaging speech about the website) renders access unauthorized, then violations of those private terms of service become crimes through the phrase “exceeds authorized access” in the Challenged Provision. Such speech or expressive activity thus becomes prohibited under pain of criminal sanctions simply because it occurred on the internet.There's some more as well, including the idea that setting up fake profiles to test a site for discrimination may be considered a terms of service violation and one that violates the free speech of the researchers.
Because the Challenged Provision incorporates websites’ terms of service into the federal criminal code, its applications are virtually infinite; any speech or expressive activity that the private operator of a website has prohibited as a condition of access to its website becomes a criminal violation, even where that prohibition covers speech subsequent to the visit and in a different forum. In a good number of cases, a website’s ToS will prohibit speech that cannot constitutionally be prohibited. Accordingly, although the Challenged Provision may have legitimate applications, its unconstitutional applications are substantial in relation to its legitimate scope.
As for the Fifth Amendment:
The Challenged Provision fails to notify ordinary people of what conduct is criminal because the phrase “exceeds authorized access” does not provide sufficient notice that an individual must comply with a website’s written terms of service at all times. The plain meaning of the phrase “exceeds authorized access” does not clearly cover instances where a website places no barriers, such as technological or physical barriers, to access by individuals.While I've been quite vocal for years about the problems of the CFAA and how it chills a variety of activities, including ones similar to those described here, and while I have enormous respect for the ACLU, I do wonder how successful this case will be. Courts are not always happy to take on cases that can be seen as more "speculative" than over a clear issue (i.e., after someone's been charged with violating the CFAA for this kind of activity). At the same time, courts also like to avoid dealing with Constitutional questions, if they can avoid it -- and so far, multiple courts have rejected attempts to claim that mere terms of service violation violates the CFAA. So they can get out of handling the Constitutional question by just saying "well, that particular use is not a CFAA violation."
So while I think this is a really important issue, and I'd love to see a constitutional challenge to these aspects of the CFAA succeed, I'm at least somewhat skeptical of the chances of this particular case. Hopefully, I'm proven wrong.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th amendment, academics, algorithms, cfaa, discrimination, journalism, research, terms of service
Companies: aclu
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Careful What You Wish For
The researchers in this case are trying to prove that some algorithms have racially biased results, and if they're successful other groups will use that as evidence of intentional discrimination. Even if a successful defense is raised, it's still proof of disparate impact, so anyone with any kind of automated marketing or other identification could be on the hook for civil rights lawsuits because their algorithm identified people in a biased manner.
This is particularly tough with machine learning, since you don't actually program the algorithm, you just program how to program itself, so you may be innocently guilty of a violation of the law, and since with disparate impact your intentions don't matter we should expect to see people put through the wringer because of what technologists would consider innocent conduct.
Of course, this is a problem with other laws, not the fixing of the CFAA specifically.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Careful What You Wish For
Do you know what you get when certain very vocal idiots spend years screaming "RACISM!!!!!!" over every little thing that manages to negatively impact some minority in some way, and then nearly every time, when you actually look closely at it, you see that racism had nothing to do with it in the first place?
Anyone familiar with the old tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf could have predicted this one easily enough: The answer looks a whole lot like the story of the current presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
My house, my rules?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
AI USA
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: My house, my rules?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: My house, my rules?
This is analogous to the terms of service of a website. If I break into the server, perhaps that warrants criminal charges. But if I simply violate the terms of service, they should only be able to have me leave.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
This is a bit of a stretch for me. I would say that the First Amendment protects speech. It does not protect "information gathering".
This is like charging someone with trespassing at Fight Club because they later talked about Fight Club, and they have a rule against that and never would have let them in if they had known. It's all well and good that they wouldn't have let them in - but they DID let them in, and any later violation of the rules doesn't retroactively make them guilty of trespassing. And it shouldn't retroactively make anyone guilty of unauthorized access. The access was authorized. It's what they did later that wasn't.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Careful What You Wish For
There are a lot of things that are racially or otherwise discriminatory in unfair ways. Just because they are unconscious doesn't mean they shouldn't be changed. There is always someone who will file a ridiculous lawsuit, but the larger problem is that once having it pointed out that some behavior is racist (or otherwise bigoted, regardless of the intent of the one doing the behavior), instead of reflecting on the issue and maybe changing the behavior, the decision frequently is enough to double down and continue to perpetuate it.
If you want to pretend that subtle, cultural, institutional, and otherwise unconscious racist (or sexist, or whatever) biases and behaviors don't exist and aren't a problem for people (or algorithms) that wouldn't consciously choose to promote or continue problematic biases, you can choose to believe that, or choose to worry that some stupid lawsuit here and there is more important. We will never have an end of bad lawsuits and rulings. But you can drastically eliminate the fodder for them in this arena by simply doing the right thing. And in plenty of cases, I'm sure i'd cry a river for the privileged few who are put through the wringer when they won't bother to give a rat's ass about things like racism, or unintended consequences, or, being by and large corporate entities, human beings in general. Which they don't. And which seems to be a huge deal to people around here if do some other stupid thing, intentional or not, regarding other popular subjects on Techdirt. Including other idiotic applications of the CFAA and First Amendment issues, and privacy issues with slurpy Big Data.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: My house, my rules?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
[ link to this | view in thread ]
techno illiterate lawmakers
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: techno illiterate lawmakers
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
Propaganda can be approached and mitigated with computational analysis. Further the phrase "We the people" not only endows the people with the right to validate the integrity of their intercourse with the state, but assigns them the DUTY to do so.
The prevalence of insanely opaque propaganda in modern media, clearly demonstrates that the people have not, and are not standing up to their end of the bargain that was struck in 1789. The thickness of the buffer between the people and the state is at an all time high.
Validating the integrity of the intercourse between the citizen and the state is both a human right and the duty of free men. The decision of the court is tangential to the resolution of this issue, and only matters in so far as it may confirm or harm the courts integrity before its own oath.
When they said "certain unalienable rights", THIS is what they were talking about. TOS can not deny you this right any more than they can deny you the right to breath.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Careful What You Wish For
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: My house, my rules?
More like you've put completely arbitrary and nonsensical rules in place for the specific purpose of keeping someone from exposing the flaws in your web site.
It's like a lock company putting up a display of their new, ultra-secure lock that they claim nobody can open without a key and then freaking out when someone wants to use a set of lockpicks to test their claims.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: My house, my rules?
Suppose you go to a popular diner one day. There's a sign with very small print on the door -- the text is far too small to read and is posted in a way that most customers won't see it.
The sign declares that anyone entering the door and ordering food agrees to the posted Terms of Service. Among the Terms is a non-disparagement clause that forbids negative commentary and retroactively revokes authorization to be inside the diner if anyone does so.
The cook is having a hellishly bad month and loses his mind while your food is being cooked. He takes a dump in the fryer, and serves it to everyone in the restaurant -- nicely breaded and fried, but still excrement.
Naturally, no one there enjoys the meal at all. About half the people call the health department, about a quarter call their lawyer, the last quarter call the police. All of them tell their friends, post to social media, and write reviews of the horrific experience.
The restaurant owner calls the police on all of them, and demands they all be arrested for violating the Terms of Service and accessing the restaurant while unauthorized.
If it's a brick & mortar diner, the police will laugh at the crazy man. But if the diner in question were a website, every one of those customers would be guilty of a felony and subject to prison time and enormous fines. All because it happened on the internet.
THAT is why the CFAA is a bad law.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: My house, my rules?
It doesn't really matter what your terms of service say if you have no realistic means to enforce them other than trying to sue people.
If you want to truly restrict what people can do with what they find at your site, then make your site membership-only. That way you can "eject" those who don't abide by your terms.
It seems pretty simple to me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]