I really hope they don't arrest him.
But at the same time, I hope they do and then he fights the CFAA and kills that stupid law once and for all.
But at the same time, I hope they do and then he fights the CFAA and kills that stupid law once and for all.
The crimes are vague and the prison terms are absolutely bonkers. You can literally go hit someone over the head with a 2x4 and get less prison time than you could get for breaking into their iPhone.
The fact that a lot of courts are completely ignorant about technology in general and will eat up whatever junk a company tells them (e.g. "this XSS exploit cost us $50K in wages to repair!") is also a huge problem.
Nah, I already posted my experiences in multiple places. It's a long story.
https://scott.arciszewski.me/blog/2014/03/black-and-white-26... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954123
http://www.cnet.com/news/from-wargames-to-aaron-swartz-how-u...
the CFAA's punishments, drafted during a post-WarGames computer hacking scare and designed to deter intrusions into NORAD, threatened Swartz with stiffer penalties than if he had been convicted of assault with an actual crowbar...
"WarGames" inspired these extra-long prison terms. As soon as it was released in June 1983, the movie, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker who broke into NORAD's mainframe and nearly ignited World War III, electrified Capitol Hill and kicked off an anti-hacker panic...
No fewer than six different anti-hacking bills were introduced that year, and Congress convened its first hearings as soon as politicians returned from their summer recess. Rep. Dan Glickman, a Kansas Democrat, opened the proceedings by saying: "We're gonna show about four minutes from the movie 'WarGames,' which I think outlines the problem fairly clearly." A House committee report solemnly intoned: "'WarGames' showed a realistic representation of the automatic dialing and access capabilities of the personal computer."...
I can't see any possible way this could happen in the courts. Yes, the law is too harsh, but it is pretty far from being unconstitutionally harsh. For anything less than life in prison (i.e., any "term of years" sentence) courts are incredibly deferential to congress in analyzing a sentence's proportionality. (In fact, until recently, at least one circuit had a rule that any term-of-years sentence was per se proportionate.) The supreme court has used examples like life sentences for parking offenses in explaining the threshold.
Can anyone here think of a ground for overturning CFAA on a ground other than disproportionality?
2. The CFAA says nothing about explicit authorization. It just requires "authorization." There will be fringe cases where it will be difficult to determine what that means, but usually (including the example you helpfully provided -- yes, of course I'm authorized to access news.ycombinator.com) it could not be easier.
http://minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ker...
I'll just finish with this though: not even the article you sent me suggests that CFAA will ever be struck down on vagueness grounds. Rather, he thinks that the void-for-vagueness doctrine will create some outer limit on courts' interpretation of the statute. These are what I referred to as the inevitable fringe cases. Note, though, that this article was written four years ago, and I've seen no indication that the trend he has identified has continued to develop in any significant way.
I meant in general. When you see prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges deciding the plea bargain deals at strip clubs (with the pretense that they would merely "go through the motions" under public scrutiny) ahead of time, you tend to not respect the profession.
> I'm not sure what more there is to say, though, if you're not willing to actually defend your view.
My view is simple: I want that law to cease to exist through any legal means necessary because it gives prosecutors far too much potential for abuse. If vagueness isn't sufficient or is too disputable, let's find another attack vector.
If we want it fixed, we need to come up with a strategy to get Congress to fix it. That won't be easy, but I think it may be the only way. (Of course, CFAA is only one of many criminal laws that need to be reformed in precisely the same way. Drug laws are, of course, another great example.)
I do want to try to dispel just a bit of your cynicism about the criminal justice system, though. Unfortunately, I can't say a lot about the state systems, but I can tell you from extensive first hand experience behind the scenes in the federal court system that the plea bargaining process (and all the rest of it) works pretty much as advertised. While prosecutors may be overzealous, there is no shady back room business going on behind judges and prosecutors in strip clubs or anywhere else. (I'm not saying, of course, that it NEVER happens, but that, if it does, it would be a rarity and all the other judges would be aghast. The actual culture among federal judges would never condone what you've described.) This doesn't mean that defendants always get a fair chance. They typically have few resources, little knowledge of the system, and are threatened with huge penalties (though at least in federal court the appointed representation actually tends to be decent). But at least the courts themselves are not rigged against them. (I suspect much the same can be said for many state courts, but not, unfortunately, all.)
Damn. Oh well. What can we do? :)
> If we want it fixed, we need to come up with a strategy to get Congress to fix it. That won't be easy, but I think it may be the only way. (Of course, CFAA is only one of many criminal laws that need to be reformed in precisely the same way. Drug laws are, of course, another great example.)
Agreed.
> I do want to try to dispel just a bit of your cynicism about the criminal justice system, though. Unfortunately, I can't say a lot about the state systems, but I can tell you from extensive first hand experience behind the scenes in the federal court system that the plea bargaining process (and all the rest of it) works pretty much as advertised.
This was the State of Florida system, not the Federal one, so it's probably corrupt in different quantities than the one I witnessed firsthand. :)