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Comment by netizen-936824 | Hacker News Reader

Sounds to me like we need to write better laws

We do! The CFAA was literally a reaction to the film WarGames, written in an era where computers were rare and unusual, and very few people had any legitimate reason to access a computer network. It's long past time that it was updated to reflect modern reality and expectations.

But in the meantime, it's great that the DOJ is explicitly denouncing some of the more ridiculous interpretations of the CFAA. No reasonable person would expect that violating a web site's Terms of Service could result in criminal charges, for example.

While the original CFAA goes back to 1986 it was amended a few times and IIRC the broad expansion happened in 2008.

And those amendments have generally been in the direction of broadening the CFAA even further, like defining a "protected computer" as any computer used for interstate commerce or communication (which could mean any computer, or even a cell phone).

Yes. But the world is too complex to write perfect laws so we must always account for discretion. Writing better laws is a goal, not a solution.

I agree that it's not a perfect solution (there's rarely such a thing in the application of law), but it's a better solution than a single DoJ administration's policy statements.

Both at once works better than trusting just one. Think of it as Defense in Depth.

I don't think anyone is suggesting anything different, only that a change in law would be much stronger effective defense and something to also strive for (despite also not being perfect).

Or at least in the USA, actually seat a "jury of ones peers" rather than random Joes that can barely turn on a computer. For computer related crimes it shouldn't be that hard to find people working in a technology oriented field.

That's a difficult principle to generalize. Surely cops shouldn't get juries comprised of other cops. A lot of professions are known for circling the wagons and protecting their own (and I think tech is not the worst, but certainly not an exception.)

The law interprets "jury of ones peers" differently than that. It specifically doesn't want them to be subject matter experts since each side will bring their own expert witnesses. It instead simply wants them to be ordinary, unattached members of the public rather than judges, prosecuters, politicians, or the victims themselves.

Right, your legal peers are members of the same social class (commoner, aristocracy, royalty), not people who work in the same field. In the US there is only one official social class, so everyone is your peer.

There does seem to be an issue with baseline education standards and the ability of the jury to understand the evidence which they deliberate on, however. To an extent it's the lawyers' job to ensure that the jury understands their arguments, but no reasonable effort from a lawyer over the course of a single trial is going to make up for a lack of basic familiarity with the subject matter, which might normally take years to acquire. There is something to be said for systems which rely on professional jurors rather than random members of the public.

I once asked a friend who litigates patent infringement cases how a jury could possibly come to an informed decision on these cases. He said that it is definitely a challenge but that juries are pretty good at discerning when someone is lying or dissembling and litigators can build cases or defenses around that.

Definitely anecdote and not data, but I found it interesting coming from a litigator in this area.

A jury of one's peers means a random selection of the public. In England the Magna Carta codified this due process protection and it means that noblemen would be judged by other private individuals in their social class instead of by the King's functionaries.

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