Cory Doctorow on aaronsw and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) | Hacker News Reader

Cory Doctorow on aaronsw and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)

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32 pointsasimjalis7 comments

Non-Twitter version: https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#cfaa

Thank you, I block twitter universally at my firewall these days, really annoying people post urls there like paywall links. Only you pay with your soul.

Weird that he name-checks "Reagan" three times, without ever once mentioning that Carmen Ortiz, the publicity-hungry prosecutor who massively overcharged Swartz, was appointed by Barack Obama, at the request of Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, after having been Eric Holder's intern.

It's like the way that "Reagan" is somehow responsible for the homeless problem in California, despite not having been Governor of California for 45 years.

Read the whole thread. It’s in the second tweet.

I did read the whole thread. He mentions Ortiz's name, but does not mention that she was appointed by Obama at the request of Kennedy and Kerry.

Just as I said.

Ortiz has a long history of overcharging controversies, most of which were not in the area of computer crimes. Mentioning Reagan three times while not mentioning the person who was actually responsible for this self-aggrandizing "hanging prosecutor" being in office in the first place (i.e., Obama) is pretty disingenuous.

Of course, that's par for the course for Doctorow.

P.S. how could I possibly have known that Reagan was mentioned three times without "reading the whole thread"?

The author's point is pretty clearly made: CFAA is too vague. If your interpretation was "yeah but what about the democrat appointed prosecutor?", then you're not wrong, what Ortiz did is definitely reprehensible and part of the problem. But you're missing the point: the problem is with the law as it was written under Reagan.

And to be honest, this kind of whataboutism feels motivated by partisanship more than anything else, which makes it unlikely that anyone will want to engage with you.

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