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Hackers are 'Terrorists' Under Ashcroft's New Act
Carlos writes "Most computer crimes are considered acts of terrorism under John Ashcroft's proposed 'Anti-Terrorism Act,' according to this story on SecurityFocus. The Act would abolish the statute of limitations for computer crime, retroactively, force convicted hackers to give the government DNA samples for a special federal database, and increase the maximum sentence for computer intrusion to life in prison. Harboring or providing advice to a hacker would be terrorism as well. This is on top of the expanded surveillance powers already reported on. The bill could be passed as early as this week. I feel safer already."
There are just way too many of us out here.
Put us all in prison, and prisons will be freer than out here.
The true hacker is absolutely, completely, devoted to freedom.
-wp
information is immaterial
Damn, we /.'ed the securityfocus server... that's a DOS attack, isn't it?
Quick, smash your DSL modems, clear your logs, and run for the hills before the Feds arrive!
Providing advice to a Hacker == criminal offense? Doesn't legal counsel count as advice? Isn't that protected under the 5th ammendment?
I am !amused.
here in the U.S. the punishment is supposed to fit the crime. i can't think of any other nonviolent, arguably victimless crime that carries no statute of limitations and can get you life in prison.
All it takes is one bad customer relationship to cause a false accusation...
jeremiah cornelius
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why in the world would they need DNA. I am pretty sure that no where in the specs for DNS or IPv4 is it required that my genome sequence be part of the string being sent out.
So, who wants to take bets that the RIAA get's copyright violaters termed as hackers?
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Right now, the laws in this country have you by six degrees of separation. If anyone is determined enough, they can convict you and throw you away for life based on laws that reference laws that reference laws. . .
This is a perfect example. Decrypting DVDs under the DMCA is circumvention. Circumvention is hacking. Hacking is now terrorism.
Crack a copy of your new CD so you can have burned copies in your car instead of the originals (in case they get stolen), and you are now a terrorist.
Ok, computer crime should be crime.
But crime punishable by life in prison? With no statute of limitations? Doesn't murder have no statute of limitations and get you life?
There's a difference between 'crime is crime' and having some sense of proportion. geez.
I don't mind increase survelance powers in order to fight terrorism. However, scrawling "I love you Crystal" or some such on some web page is not terrorism.
This thing needs to at least be tempered by a clause which adds or defines criminal intent. That is, if hacking is done with the intent to destroy or disable the United States government and/or make actual acts of terrorism (such as blowing people up) easier, then throw the bastards in jail. But defacing some web site doesn't harm the United States government; it's just annoying as hell. And annoying doesn't deserve life in prison without the possibility of parole--especially since actually killing someone is what I would consider slightly more annoying, yet many types of murder don't get anywhere near life.
Doesn't the CIA employ many, many crackers to bust into their stuff?
--
this would make def con illegal... a convention of terrorists giving information to each other.
what next?
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
I don't know much about how this bill would be interpreted were it to come to law, but it seems to me that making security bugs known to the general public could be construed as giving advice to a hacker since, well, it alerts the general public to security problems.
This is a perversion of what Ashcroft requested. Hackers who attempt to disrupt key systems that are vital to protecting human life, for example the FAA's radar systems, are terrorists. And they are.
-- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Break into their computer, and you're instantly labelled a terrorist. Think there's any chance you'll get much less than the maximum penalty of life? Hell, my high school once informally accused me of piracy (which, incidentally, I was not guilty of) just on the basis that I knew enough and therefore could have done it. If there's anything that makes people paranoid, it's hearing that the Big Bad Hacker is right outside their computer's door.
Fair, no?
Hackers face life imprisonment under 'Anti-Terrorism' Act Justice Department proposal classifies most computer crimes as acts of terrorism.
By Kevin Poulsen
Sep 23 2001 11:00PM PT
Hackers, virus-writers and web site defacers would face life imprisonment without the possibility of parole under legislation proposed by the Bush Administration that would classify most computer crimes as acts of terrorism.
The Justice Department is urging Congress to quickly approve its Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), a twenty-five page proposal that would expand the government's legal powers to conduct electronic surveillance, access business records, and detain suspected terrorists.
The proposal defines a list of "Federal terrorism offenses" that are subject to special treatment under law. The offenses include assassination of public officials, violence at international airports, some bombings and homicides, and politically-motivated manslaughter or torture.
Most of the terrorism offenses are violent crimes, or crimes involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. But the list also includes the provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that make it illegal to crack a computer for the purpose of obtaining anything of value, or to deliberately cause damage. Likewise, launching a malicious program that harms a system, like a virus, or making an extortionate threat to damage a computer are included in the definition of terrorism.
To date no terrorists are known to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But several recent hacker cases would have qualified as "Federal terrorism offenses" under the Justice Department proposal, including the conviction of Patrick Gregory, a prolific web site defacer who called himself "MostHateD"; Kevin Mitnick, who plead guilty to penetrating corporate networks and downloading proprietary software; Jonathan "Gatsby" Bosanac, who received 18-months in custody for cracking telephone company computers; and Eric Burns, the Shoreline, Washington hacker who scrawled "Crystal, I love you" on a United States Information Agency web site in 1999. The 19-year-old was reportedly trying to impress a classmate with whom he was infatuated.
The Justice Department submitted the ATA to Congress late last week as a response to the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that killed some 7,000 people.
As a "Federal terrorism offense," the five year statute of limitations for hacking would be abolished retroactively -- allowing computer crimes committed decades ago to be prosecuted today -- and the maximum prison term for a single conviction would be upped to life imprisonment. There is no parole in the federal justice system
Those convicted of providing "advice or assistance" to cyber crooks, or harboring or concealing a computer intruder, would face the same legal repercussions as an intruder. Computer intrusion would also become a predicate offense for the RICO statutes.
DNA samples would be collected from hackers upon conviction, and retroactively from those currently in custody or under federal supervision. The samples would go into the federal database that currently catalogs murderers and kidnappers.
Civil liberties groups have criticized the ATA for its dramatic expansion of surveillance authority, and other law enforcement powers.
But Attorney General John Ashcroft urged swift adoption of the measure Monday.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft defended the proposal's definition of terrorism. "I don't believe that our definition of terrorism is so broad," said Ashcroft. "It is broad enough to include things like assaults on computers, and assaults designed to change the purpose of government."
The Act is scheduled for mark-up by the committee Tuesday morning.
information is immaterial
All those that detect and report security flaws in systems are terrorists because they comunicate these details to the Crackers (accidentally, but what does that have to do with it?).
Bummer...
-- Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
who are the victims?
stop and think.
if someone commits credit card fraud with said stolen numbers, then we know who the victim is. but we already have a law for that. until some other crime is committed, there was no victim of simply stealing the numbers.
just because a computer was used to commit the crime, it doesn't mean the crime is somehow worse than the same thing done without a computer. theft is theft, and should be treated as such. it's not like we have separate murder laws for guns vs knives...
Does recommending LINUX count? Does Criticizing Windoze insecurities count? What about BugTraq?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Depends on the crime. Cracking a big DB of credit cards yes, but how about reverse engineering say, a copyright'd protocol? Maybe the people who made programs like gaim, gnapster, knaptser, kicq, gnomeicu, etc should get thrown in jail for their evil "hacking"?
I'm not against bad things being a crime, but who gets to define what is a crime or not? And what about when new types of hacking/cracking come out? Maybe windows virus authors should be made criminals? How about websites that use cookies to track you (doubleclick anyone?).
The problem with computers and hacking in general is that it's very hard to narrowly define what is and isn't a crime. Mitnick is a sure sign of this, as is Dimitri. On one side ($$) it's a crime of epic proportions, on the other side it's harmless fun, investigation, proving a point, whatever. This has been a problem since phreaking and probably far before....
Microsoft regularly gives advice to hackers with this thing called the Knowlege Base.
They even have a program (IIS) that aids hackers in break in attempts.
Their new advertisement advocates the destruction of buildings.
This is clearly one of the worst terror organizations
The US and it's allies must take action
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
How about growing marijuana?
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
So now if script kiddi3s in the US, decide to deface chinese websites, the Chinese authorities could legitimately, accuse the US of harboring Terrorists???
- Tempestdata
Let's all remember that this guy lost an election to a corpse, please.
Seriously, I'm afraid that this line of reasoning is only going to continue under the Bush administration.
Anyone who violates the conservative faction's very narrow definition of legality and morality is going to face harsher and harsher penalties. It's the 'hackers' right now. I'll be charitable and say that that means anyone who illegally breaks into a computer system or network. It will be expanded in the very near future to include anyone who violates non-circumvention clause of the DMCA. Seriously, how far are those two apart?
It can be reasonably argued that violating copy protections will put illegal technology or information in the hands of terrorists.
The logical progression is pretty evident from that point on. Anyone caught breaking a copyright will be targeted, and then anyone who illegaly owns copyrighted material will be targeted.
Hmmm... I wonder if I should encrypt the stash of Anime fansubs on my HDD. Wait, encryption is going to be illegal to! I'm a terroist either way!
Congress will just keep passing laws to give Bush and Ashcroft what they want in the name of 'National Security'. Don't think for a second that they won't.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This act and the DMCA are eerily similar. Both seek to address particular historical circumstances and events (e.g. Napster, terrorist attacks). Both sets of circumstances are genuinely complex and problematic. And, in both cases, there were already perfectly adequate laws more general laws which address the particular situation. We already have laws to address copyright violation, and we already have laws to convict violent criminals, spies, and yes...even hackers.
The DMCA and all these supposedly anti-terrorist laws, past and present, take a terribly backward approach to lawmaking. The best laws, like the best software, succeed on minimality and generality. Witness the excellent US constitution, which has been extremely effective considering how long it's been around. The constitution uses very broad terms -- "life", "property", "punishment", "vote" -- and very few specific terms. (Some parts are quite specific, like the quartering of soldiers bit. They seem very quaint now.)
Laws, like software, tend to break if they are designed in specificity but used in generality. The trouble with these new laws is that they create all kinds of special cases and extra circumstances designed for a particular moment in history, which we'll have to support for decades or even centuries. The new terrorist laws, in a way, are like the 640k RAM limit -- they seem good enough for now, but in the future, they'll cripple and break all kinds of things.
The difference is, in this case, it is our fundamental freedoms that are being to get crippled and broken. As always, please please please call your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. They are under a lot of pressure right now, and they need to hear from sensible people.
Ok, does that mean that datahavens like Sealand are now suddenly Terrorist cells?
They harbor data, quite possibly for "crackers", along with other "questionable" sources (along with many legitamite ones too). If I were them, I'd be a little worried.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Is everone infected with Code Red a terrorist?
Silly huh? Well, people thought it was silly to say that the attack would be used as an excuse to abridge our rights further.
Fight Spammers!
Is intrusion necessarily terrorism? If I break into the DMV computer system and replace their web page with something silly, that is certainly criminal, but it's more like vandalism than terrorism. Besides, wouldn't you be a traitor and not a terrorist even if these things did apply?
Also, does this mean that we no longer need virus programs and firewalls? I mean, who needs to lock their door when burglary is illegal?
And of course, how does this bode for tech workers? I often have to gain access to a customer's servers. Does this mean a simple "here's some credentials for you to use" is no longer enough? Do I have to have the admin at the customer's site file a contract with his boss and have his boss and himself and myself sign it each and every time I help them out, even if I'm just entering to check their logs because -- hey -- someone might later say it was unauthorized?
Ashcroft can suck my cock -- but we all know these things will be passed. And projects like mozilla.org that have sections on "hacking the code" will become villified for contributing to terrorism. Welcome to the witch-hunts; i'm finding a new line of fucking work.
Does 2600 magazine qualify as an organization that gives advice to hackers, and would therefore be classified as a terrorist organization under this new bill?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
... so the entire IIS team will be in the slammer RSN huh? :)
Agreed, people who steal credit card numbers are bad and should be punished. But this law makes no distinction between cracking into a big ass server and stealing credit cards and cracking into a tiny ass server to write your name on the home page.
You wouldn't think it was fair to sentence someone who scrawled "Kilroy wuz here '01" on the bathroom wall of a pizza parlor to life in prison, would you? Because that's what this law states: Scrawl your name on any website without the author's permission and be punished as if you were Osama bin Laden's personal hackmeister.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Unfortunately, I can't read the actual article, because securityfocus is /.ed, so I'll have to go by the summary.
/me breaks out my copy of the US constitution...
abolish the statute of limitations for computer crime, retroactively...
From Article I, section 9, paragraph 3:
"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed".
Ex Post Facto refers to laws having a retroactive effect, for those of you wondering.
So, as always, IANAL, but this sure doesn't sound constitutional to me.
Basically, if this were to be passed, it would tell the public that cracking/hacking is considered to be worse than murder. They even go so far as to say that giving advice to a cracker/hacker can yield life in prison! Is it just me, or is something seriously wrong here? I could go off and murder somone and receive less of a punishment than someone who defaced a website, resulting in a few hours of repairs by the administrator and the fixing of a securty hole. I'm sorry, but that's just not right.
You are talking about the same country in which courts upheld the expulsion of a six year old boy from an east coast school because he kissed a girl on the cheek? After all, a no tolerance policy is a no tolerance policy.
Hey, why not impose a life sentence for ignoring the "Don't walk on the grass" sign. It's no problem because you're fine as long as you don't walk on the grass.
this is a bit more like spraypainting it in big letters on their corporate headquarters.
which would get you in deep shit if you were caught.
Computer crime should be a crime.
But it already *is* a crime. The question is what is a just response to computer crimes. Some things which are *not* just:
- Sentencing someone to lifetime imprisonment without possibility of parole for a simple computer crime. Remember, if the crime really warranted such a sentence--for example, cracking air traffic control and causing planes to crash into each other; cracking a CIA computer and stealing national secrets--then the criminal would already be liable for serious punishment under existing laws--murder and espionage, in these cases.
- Retroactively eliminating the statute of limitations, allowing people to now be charged with computer "crimes" they committed decades ago.
What's even worse is the provision that giving advice or information which may be used to facilitate computer crimes is not only criminalized but subject to the same penalties.To put it another way, if this law passes then someone could be given life in prison without parole for documenting vulnerabilities which allow systems to be compromised by a cracker or a worm. Indeed, it isn't clear that, with the removal of the statute of limitations, they couldn't charge the people documented the vulnerabilities responsible for eg. Code Red or Nimda under this law.
This provision is like the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA writ large. Whereas at least the DMCA only applies to access-control restrictions on copyrighted material, this law could potentially make all discussion of any vulnerabilities which allow systems or information to be compromised illegal.
These provisions are so utterly preposterous and out of proportion to the crimes (or so-called crimes) discussed as to boggle the mind.
We do not harbor terrorists!
Am I dreaming or is this country really THE America?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I kmew this Ashcroft guy was trouble.
sulli
RTFJ.
Where disrupting business is a crime equivalent to murdering thousands.
And the recording industry was happy because they convinced people that unauthorized duplication was somehow equivalent to theft of property or stealing from ships on the high seas. Well, I think this tops that!
I think the USA should just take a tip from the Taliban and make all crimes punishable by death or corporeal punishment.
And the message is clear. If you're a high school student thinking of hacking a bank web site and stealing credit card numbers, forget it, KILL THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE INSTEAD! You'll get the same punishment anyway, so do something more stylish!!
So what exactly IS hacking according to the ATA?(how ironic, it's a acrynoum, for a computer term) Seriously, how long before the DCMA is included in this? Will I face federal prosecution for telling a friend about gnutella because the program can be used for illegal stuff? Could CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal be dragged from their homes at 6 in the morning and sent to jail because Slashdot had posted a story that talks about the Microsoft security problem of the week, since that could be concieved as giving advice to hackers? I am writing my senators about this asking them to reject the overly broad terms of the ATA and computer 'hacking'. I hope a number of you do the same.
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
So therefore, one shouldn't complain about bad laws? How can bad laws possibly get changed if no one complains? How will we stop even worse laws from being passed?
But maybe you're right. After we all, we all know the goverment has the best intentions in mind when they pass laws about computer and high-tech crimes. (*cough* DMCA *cough*)
Crime is crime, yes, but the punishment should fit the crime. Adding a few words to a web page as a publicity stunt should not be punished in the same manner as multiple homicide, or armed robbery, or collaborating on a terrorist attack.
I suppose you'd feel comfortable in a society where the judicial system lopped off criminal's bodyparts, as well? Or caned you silly? No thank you. As it is, I think prison should be for VIOLENT OFFENDERS ONLY. There are many ways to pass a sentence on non-violent offenders, without prison, and without impacting society in such a heavy-handed legal and financial way.
--ksw2
MUST?????
While there are many things in life that I MUST do, obey the law is not one of them. I think you're a bit confused about the meaning of the word must. Eating is a must, breathing is a must, doing what the state tells me to is not.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
How about growing marijuana?
That is an excellent example of a victimless "crime" that numerous goodhearted American people are rotting in jail for right now.
Ashcroft's new proposals, though, go far beyond making computer-crime 'crime'. It already is. What he's doing is making it terrorism. People could be jailed for life for the electronic equivilent of graffitti.
"I don't believe that our definition of terrorism is so broad," said Ashcroft. "It is broad enough to include things like assaults on computers, and assaults designed to change the purpose of government."
The irony is that he wants to fight assaults designed to change the purpose of government by changing laws in direct response to a terrorist attack.
The long-term damage from the terror attacks will come from our leaders as they exploit public rage to slip new crap like this into federal law.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Segregation used to be a law too. The point being that if you think a law is wrong, you try to get it changed. Y'know, civil disobedience, lobbying, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" and all that..
Anyone making life easier for a "hacker" (cracker) could be sentenced to life without parole?
Bill Gates had better pack his bags now! ("... the most cigarettes.")
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
...or is securityfocus.com one of the slowest, ugliest websites anywhere?
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
I just want to know as anyone found any evidence of terrorists using anything "high tech" for WTC?
The highest tech I have heard of is using email at Kinko's.
What about the hundreds of politicians in Washington who do nothing but look for innovative ways to hurt the party opposite their own?
Party politics and blind partisanship is the root cause of an awful lot of bullshit in our government.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
It's still stupid though.
Your post would be more believable is you hadn't confused Mississippi with Missouri.
I do not have a signature
Actually, parole was something mentioned in the article. You see, it seems that the federal justice system doesn't have a concept of parole. I may have to leave the country sometime soon, just to have any shred of freedom left. Anybody got any suggestions?
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
The problem here isn't so much that they're saying that computer crime is illegal - more that the punishment is ridiculously severe. When deciding on a punishment, you have to decide what the aim of punishment is and how best to achieve that aim. In this case however, the law makers seem to have the aim of getting votes and the best method is to be tough on terrorism of any kind. It pulls at the heart strings of the nation so of course it gets votes.
Besides the political goals though, there are two main aims people have for utilising jail terms as punishment. The first is to remove the villian from society so that we can all forget about them and feel safe again - the death penalty is much more effective at achieving this aim so why not just use it? Some countries take this approach and it works, there is almost zero crime because people know if they commit a crime they are either executed or deported. The problem with this approach is twofold, firstly it expects everyone to lead a near perfect life and never make a mistake (think of how many teenagers commit once off offences to look cool and later learn from their mistakes and go on to be useful to society. The other problem is that eventually you punish the wrong guy and there's no way to set him free again.
The other aim for imprisonment is to teach people a lesson so they can rejoin society and live happily with everyone else again. Countries such as the US and Australia (and many others) with long jail terms don't acheive this goal at all well. The revolving door prison system is well known - most offenders wind up committing more crimes and going back into the system. However, countries which use shorter jail terms tend to have much lower crime rates. Instead of being locked up for 20 years and becoming bitter against society, you spend one or two years in a correctional facility where you are taught skills to help you survive in the world, go through drug rehabilitation if needed and work with councellors to deal with a disturbed past that may be haunting you. After that you have a much better chance of coming back out into society and not only abiding by the law, but also contributing to the community. If you think the cost of this approach is just too great, think about the cost of keeping people in prison for those extra 18 years and you'll find it works out a lot cheaper. It is not a 100% effective measure, some people will recommit and you need to have ways to deal with that - either through different methods of punishment or by longer imprisonments. It does however give criminals a chance to learn from their errors and adopt new skills to remove the temptation to recommit. After all, isn't that what punishment is all about?
I really wish that I had mod points to mod you up. But please keep in mind that it's sometimes very hard to prove that you had only good intentions when you were posting an exploit to a mailing list after some bastard uses it to blow up a shopping mall before Christmas.
It is the same problem people had with the outbreak of school violence. They immediately went to blame violent video games as the 'sole' cause. Also, take cell phones and automobile accidents for example. People blamed those, even though they are one of the smallest causes.
In essence, people look for the easiest thing to blame, which usually ends up being technology, since its 'new,' it must be the source of 'new' problems like terrorism, even though there is no true solution or source to blame for such occurances.
What you're saying is that smart people like him, who sometimes use a little poor judgment, should be given life sentences in prison? You're saying that was Randall did is on the same level as murder?
The middle mind speaks!
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft defended the proposal's definition of terrorism. "I don't believe that our definition of terrorism is so broad," said Ashcroft. "It is broad enough to include things like assaults on computers, and assaults designed to change the purpose of government."
Seems like this bill needs to be broadened to include itself and John Ashcroft, both of whom seem hell-bent on changing the purpose of government.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Judiciary Committee List
Name, party, state, phone, fax, e-mail.
James Sensenbrenner, Chair, R-WI, (202) 225-5101,(202) 225-3190,sensen09@mail.house.gov
Henry Hyde, R-IL, (202) 225-4561, (202) 225-1166.
John Conyers Jr., D-MI, (202) 225-5126, (202) 225-0072,john.conyers@mail.house.gov
George Gekas, R-PA, (202) 225-4315, (202) 225-8440, askgeorge@mail.house.gov
Barney Frank, D-MA, (202) 225-5931, (202) 225-0182
Howard Coble, R-NC, (202) 225-3065, (202) 225-8611, howard.coble@mail.house.gov
Howard Berman, D-CA, (202) 225-4695, (202) 225-3196,Howard.Berman@mail.house.gov
Lamar Smith, R-TX, (202) 225-4236, (202) 225-8628
Rick Boucher, D-VA, (202) 225-3861, (202) 225-0442,ninthnet@mail.house.gov
Elton Gallegly, R-CA, (202) 225-5811, (202) 225-1100
Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, (202) 225-5635, (202) 225-6923, jerrold.nadler@mail.house.gov
Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, (202) 225-5431, (202) 225-9681,talk2bob@mail.house.gov
Bobby Scott, D-VA, (202) 225-8351, (202) 225-8354
Steve Chabot, R-OH, (202) 225-2216, (202) 225-3012
Mel Watt, D-NC, (202) 225-1510, (202) 225-1512, nc12.public@mail.house.gov
Bob Barr, R-GA, (202) 225-2931, (202) 225-2944, barr.ga@mail.house.gov
Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, (202) 225-3072, (202) 225-3336, zoe@lofgren.house.gov
William Jenkins, R-TN, (202) 225-6356, (202) 225-5714
Sheila Jackson Lee, D-TX, (202) 225-3816, (202)225-3317, tx18@lee.house.gov
Christopher Cannon, R-UT, (202) 225-7751, (202)225-5629, cannon.ut03@mail.house.gov
Maxine Waters, D-CA, (202) 225-2201, (202) 225-7854
Lindsey Graham, R-SC, (202) 225-5301, (202) 225-3216
Marty Meehan, D-MA, (202) 225-3411, (202) 226-0771, martin.meehan@mail.house.gov
Spencer Bachus, R-AL, (202) 225-4921, (202) 225-2082
William Delahunt, D-MA, (202) 225-3111, (202)225-5658, william.delahunt@mail.house.gov
John Hostettler, R-IA, (202) 225-4636, (202)225-3284, john.hostettler@mail.house.gov
Robert Wexler, D-FL, (202) 225-3001, (202) 225-5974
Mark Green, R-WI, (202) 225-5665, (202) 225-5729, mark.green@mail.house.gov
Tammy Baldwin, D-W, (202) 225-2906, (202) 225-6942, tammy.baldwin@mail.house.gov
Ric Keller, R-FL, (202) 225-2176, (202) 225-0999
Anthony David Weiner, D-NY, (202) 225-6616, (202)226-7253
Darrell Issa, R-CA, (202) 225-3906, (202) 225-3303
Adam Schiff, D-CA, (202) 225-4176, (202) 225-5828
Melissa Hart, R-PA, (202) 225-2565, (202) 226-2274, melissa.hart@mail.house.gov
Jeff Flake, R-AZ, (202) 225-2635, (202) 226-4386
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I doubt this bill would give me that and I'm not willing to pay the price asked even if it would. Uncle Sam will make his own definition of "protected computer" and it aint me. Enforceability? What a joke. Why should I trade non existent protection for further erosion of the security of my property, papers and personal effects from unreasonable search and seizure?
Anger and vengence are poor advisors and they make bad laws. This set of laws are hyserical.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It takes TEN letters (dead tree letters, email gets deleted immediately) for a Senatorial office to open an issue. TEN. (According to Illinois Senator Dick Durban.) And regardless of the advertising and commercials that politicians raise huge war chests to fund, on election day it is YOUR VOTE that decides who ends up in DC. (East Coast, you have no say over the West Coast one.)
I'd like to issue a call to everyone who posted something modded up to 3 or above: Write a letter to your representatives with the same level of intelligence and Interesting/Insightful content. Write it once and send it three times, once to your Congressperson, and once to each Senator. Fax it if you'd prefer. (Snail mail and fax are what they like the most.) Keep it to one page. Reference the Constitution. Refer to yourself with your most impressive title. (Professor, Ph.d, Senior Engineer, Graduate Student, Independent Developer) and as a registered voter. In the name of the Tux do not tell them that you don't vote, even if that's the case (in which case you should be ashamed of yourself). Then when the next election rolls around, ignore the commercials, take an hour to do your own research, and vote for the candidate that did not support revoking the 4th Amendment and violating Ex Post Facto. It works. (See also: Former Senator Alan Dixon)
For those of you in countries outside of the US, the same applies to you. The Canadian, British, Australian, French, German, etc. governments are all popularly elected as well. (At least the active parts of the British government, anyway.) Politicians are the same everywhere. The same tactics apply. Use them. If you don't, you have no one to blame but yourselves.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Of course Congress is also showing quite a bit of reason in the face of Ashcroft's demands, too, so maybe calmer heads will prevail. Though I tend to be a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy when it comes to such things.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
John Ashcroft announced today that the NSA has devised a fool proof deterance to E-terrorism. The new method is called Security-Through-Imprisonment, or STI.
The premise of STI is that civilian and military systems dont need to be secured, but instead laws need to be put in place that will require life sentances for so much as a failed telnet login attempt.
In response to our questions Ashcroft had the following statement: "Everyone is aware that securing Microsoft products is as futile as the war-on-drugs(TM), so we decided that rather than attempting to fix the systems - we will just send these E-Terrorists to prison for life for their crimes against Freedom(R). It is important for us to protect-our-children's(TM - H. Clinton) future in the wake of this terrible tragedy. Our new policy is called "If you cant do the right thing, then just do something"
Democracy is not a spectator sport. We have to get involved. Who do we write to? Who do we call? Who can we contact to see that this doesn't stand?
I suppose I could go to jail now over that stupid cuecat stuff.
Sigh.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Oddly enough, according to the bill the deciding determiner of whether the unlawful act is a terrorist act is whether or not it was done for financial gain. So hacking a DB of credit card info ISN'T a terrorist act, while snooping around because you want to learn something IS.
I'm sure that violation of the DMCA will be covered under this act soon, as well...
That is all.
Is that for IT support staff that have really good skills, some activity may inadvertantly be redefined by others as 'hacking'. (For example, putting a screen saver on the computers in the computer lab.)
That alone is scary enough, but now even stronger punishments, and treatment as what I am going to guess is a capital crime? Ouch. IT is looking even scarier.
(Is scarier a word?)
As David Quinn put it quite eloquently: Quite depressing, really. (The whole text can be found here, BTW)
But what can you expect when the whole world has bought into the idea that there is absolutely nothing that any one person can do to change things?
-- Shamus
Bleah!
I assume you know that *all* flight training is currently banned in the USA? Yes, that's right. If you are a flying instructor, currently *you cannot* train students.
Well, you won't go to jail. But the FAA will take your pilot's license away. If you are a pilot, that's nasty. Check out news://rec.aviation.pilots for more.
Without passing a law, without recourse to a *single* elected person, thousands of US citizens have had their source of income removed.
Well, that makes us all safe doesn't it?
Our (U.S.ians) government has its secret agenda, which is closer to the agenda of Corporate America than yours or mine. Their media (five companies) only disseminates the information favorable to its own outcome. Welcome to the machine.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
The only reason it restricts itself to only governments and military computers is that the US Gov't doesn't have jurisdiction over crimes that happen to other computers. See the interstate commerce clause in the Constitution.
.edu domains, but anything else is asking to test a very tricky boundary.
However, it's a rare computer that isn't involved in some kind of interstate commerce. Probably you're safe if you stick to the
Walt
All arguments for treating crackers like a special, would apply to any other type of criminal or suspected criminal. So why not apply the same bitchslapping against rapists, murders, etc?
This is definately a "divide and conquer" style attack. The old "they fucked x but I wasn't x so I didn't say anything .... and then they fucked me, and no one was left to speak up" applies here. Crackers are x today.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hey, I LIVE in Canada and right about now Ireland is looking mighty inviting. Only 20 miles separate me from the US...not enough IMO!
You're using her as bait, Master!
More importnantly i think there is an overlooked injustice. By merely providing informaion to a "hacker" it is covered under the same law, as if to make knowledge in its self illegal to know. What limits will they stop at, will siply consorting with a "hacker" be enough or will they try to argue the point of posting information freely being in direct violation. This all seems a bit too similar to the beginings of the Loft situation that happened, if they actually suceed this time it can go down hill fast. We are looking at the potential of wrongfull inprisonment of anyone posting security flaws! This may even bring more issues to the open source debate, they have already tried to claim it unsecure because everybody being able to se how everything is done, with ibm servers now running linux there could be very strong motions to have even that evaluated!
My sausage tree didn't grow, does that make me a bad mommy?
As I said in an earlier post, compared to what happened in New York and Washington, "cyber-terrorism" is a trivial and pointless video game. The "damage" caused by stupid DoS attacks is a mere annoyance compared to being ripped apart by randomly placed explosives or kamikaze airliners.
Nice troll, you almost had me until you called IIS "elegant", but just in case you actually convinced someone I figured I should feed you anyway.
among several other MORONIC laws passed by grandstanding Politico's seeking reelection.
RANT
Someone needs to educate ASSCROFT, but Ghandi and Mother Theresa are both dead, and few others would have the patience to deal with a person who makes a BOX of ROCKS look gifted.
/RANT
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'm not against bad things being a crime, but who gets to define what is a crime or not?
Um, Legislators? That is the entire, whole, and only point of a legislator.
Well (all in a huff) who decides who the legislators are? Well that would be all of us collectively. Some things that you think should be O.K. will sometimes be made illegal because the rest of the people don't agree with you that it is O.K. or don't care enough about it to change thier representation.
On one side ($$) it's a crime of epic proportions, on the other side it's harmless fun, investigation, proving a point, whatever. This has been a problem since phreaking and probably far before....
Cracking into someone elses computer system, intentionally writing a destructive virus, etc. are all crimes and they should be treated as such. I don't particullarly care if someone breaks into my house and goes through my papers for "harmless fun, investigation or to prove a point" I want them arrested - the same goes for someone who breaks into or intentionally damages my computer.
Sorry, couldn't pass it up
Oh, and about your sig... I'm still 100 times better than you are! Woho!
--
Just lurking, thanks!
Piecing it together:
Sec. 2510. Definitions -
(17) ''electronic storage'' means -
(A) any temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or electronic communication incidental to the electronic transmission thereof; and
(B) any storage of such communication by an electronic communication service for purposes of backup protection of such communication; and
(18) ''aural transfer'' means a transfer containing the human voice at any point between and including the point of origin and the point of reception.
(19) `protected computer' has the meaning set forth in section 1030; and
(20) `computer trespasser' means a person who accesses a protected computer without authorization and thus has no reasonable expectation of privacy in any communication transmitted to, through, or from the protected computer.
This area relates to making it legal to listen in on computer communications. e.g., the fbi and cia under these provisions are not commiting a crime. no big deal.
On the next (big) point:
from the proposal:
1030(a)(1), (a)(4), (a)(5)(A), or (a)(7)
(relating to protection of computers),
You sited A-2, note A2 is not mentioned.
From section 1030 a1, a4, a5a, and a7 -
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html)
(a) Whoever -
(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period;
(5) (A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(7) with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, educational institution, financial institution, government entity, or other legal entity, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to cause damage to a protected computer; shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section
Hacking Hotmail or any other communication system for fun, would not fall under this bill.
-- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Hey, maybe you did know better than them. But it doesn't change the facts, which are that you installed a program with the intention of getting around restrictions that were deliberately placed on the network.
It's not hard to think of reasons why Network Admins wouldn't want FTP daemons running on systems connected to the network.
Both are cases of Vandalism or even maybe destruction of public property because it is on the VERY PUBLIC NET. The only mitigating factor is the cost of the damage and clean-up. Why don't we enforce the laws we have, instead of pushing for new foolish ones ? Easy, because no Politician will get KUDOS for enforcing old legislation, but they will get BIG PUBLICITY for enacting new legislation in the current climate...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If they wanted to give you a song and dance about "the server's down, you'll just have to wait", tell them "here's a way around that", if they balk, go over their heads and tell whoever's got power over them that their incompetance is costing the company time and money.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Constitutionality will be questioned and laws like these, along with the careers of the idiots who propose them, will go the way of the dodo.
If we're lucky, the laws will go that way. I sincerely doubt that the careers of the idiots will, though.
What we need in the US is a law that punishes those who pass blatantly unconstitutional laws. Of course, since Congress routinely exempts themselves from legislation, they'd exempt themselves from this, too!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
And we should make the gaining of knowledge though legal means a crime as well? That's what this law implies. It's one small step to go from "hacking is a crime" to any "hacking related events are illegal" aka Defcon, 2600 gatherings. Or better yet, anything that is not taught by the goverment in sancitioned classrooms is a crime punishable by "life in jail".
Mashiki
--
Assholes, I'm surounded by Assholes!
--
Om, nomnomnom...
The specific sections of "computer crime" law that appear to be reclassified as "terrorist acts" appear to be only:
1030(a)(1), (a)(4), (a)(5)(A), or (a)(7) (relating to protection of computers)
Which are:
- (a) Whoever -
- (4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period;
- (5)
- (Interestingly, they don't seem to include B and C under this act as "terrorism", which are similar to section A, and are almost identical to each other - I have no idea why they have them. "B" says "(B) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage;". C is word-for-word the same, except without the word "recklessly". ANy idea why they have them both?)
- (7) with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, educational institution, financial institution, government entity, or other legal entity, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to cause damage to a protected computer; shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
In short, the only "computer crimes" listed as "terrorism" by this act are stealing US Gov't, Inc secrets by computer, maliciously hacking into a system with intent to steal valuables (aside from CPU cycles), and using threats of malicious computer hacking to extort.(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;[...]
(A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
The only one that concerns me very much here is 5A - it seems like high-paid corporate lawyers could easy "prove" that for example, if 1337D00D@scriptkiddy.com maliciously hacks into www.microsoft.com and puts a link to his website on the index page, that he's obtained at least $5000 worth of advertisement...
Come to think of it, I'm a little leery of the "or exceeds authorized access" bit in (4) - if one "accesses" a computer to purchase and legally download some proprietary "protected" piece of music or video, and finds a way to convert it to a nonproprietary format for personal use, has one "exceeded authorized access" and is therefore not merely a DMCA Criminal but a full-fledged DMCA Terrorist? It's a bit of a stretch, but I think a wealthy corporation can buy enough lawyer-approved powerpoint slides "proving" this to a non-technical jury...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
- it will be a long war
- it will be a secretive war
- the U.S. government will not necessarily reveal evidence against the terrorists they uncover.
- the U.S. government expects all other governments to comply and assist with its anti-terrorist actions.
now make hacking terrorism.now make assisting hacking terrorism.
now make hacking crimes retroactively punishable.
i've read bugtraq for years and have not informed the FBI about all the vulnerabilities released on that mailing list - will this make me negligent and punishable? will my punishment come in the form of an official court prosecution, or will special forces be sent in to take me out without ever letting anyone else know? if i move to Norway, will Norway allow the Navy SEALS to seize me?
Beware, that unmarked white van may be coming for you.
Yeah, sure, very paranoid to think that way, but consider history and consider how other police states have started their lives: will we be naive enough to let this one start as well?
-f
www.blackant.net
I'd be quite interested in the details of this. If that's accurate, not only would the legislators who voted for it be supporting a terrorist state, but it would also demonstrate the funny-yet-sad possibility that the hysteria of the "War on Drugs(tm)" has been working AGAINST the "War on Terrorism(tm)(Pat.Pending)"...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
While rapists and perpetrators of other violent crimes that do physical damage to others get off easy. God Bless America!
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
> The DMCA may be evil, but while it is law you must obey it!
/. readers
/. because they AGREE with the founding fathers views. Namely,
*Bzzt* Wrong. Thank you for playing today though!
1) US law doesn't apply to many
2) To paraphrase Augustine's famous remark "an unjust law is really no law at all."
3) We have the moral right of civil disobediance to strike down unjust law(s).
> Why is it that every slashdot poster is some sort of liberal hippy freak?
A broad claim based on what data??!
However, there are certain liberals posting on
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
"Those who give up essential liberty, to preserve a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
Cheers
Why? Whining is about the only right we'll have left if Ashcroft gets his way.
<SARCASM>
Don't you know? Complaining about unconstitutional laws is the mark of a terrorist! They're going to give life imprisonment for that next!
</SARCASM>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
On one part, Ashcroft is doing something to cover for the alledged Chinese hackers who wish to circumvent electronic security and go after the perps. While action on this part is definately welcome, there are a few more things one should consider.
On the other hand, it is one more way for the corporations with big bucks to insist on severe punishment for 14 year old kids. And no, there is no limit for how old a person must be to be labeled "terrorist".
If somebody successfully steals a database with credit cards, the company that created that database should be indicted just as well as the cracker. Why? Because they are NOT SUFFICIENTLY protecting their database. When my Egghead account was compromised I got pissed at them, not just the guys who cracked their security. If a company that wishes to have my credit card number and SSN or whatever, on electronic file, they should damn well protect that information. There are instances where people have been convicted by clause of negligence, or comparable negligence. Why is this any different? I mean, if I leave a white plastic bag with a million dollars on the curb outside the Marriott in San Francisco and I find that somebody took it, why is it that I am negligent? Because I didn't take good measures in protecting that which I meant to keep to myself!
But by all means, beef up the security around Government computer installations. I'd be happy to let my congressman pass a bill for another $5 billion to do this.
However this bill is undoubtedly going to make many people "terrorists", just because they circumvented the copy protection of Windows XP or something like that. I do not support this bill.
Alex
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
"you might be a terrorist"
Sounds like a scary parody of the Jeff Foxworthy "...you might be a redneck" standup bit.
and bear in mind it is a proposal, to be rewritten by lawyers sensative to people's rights, and later passed by capitol hill before it becomes law
The same way that the DMCA was rewritten by lawyers sensitive to people's rights?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Making "computer crimes" rise to the same legal level
as say, cutting a stewardess' throat and crashing a plane
into a building, does NOT serve to increase the magnitude
of "computer crimes", it rather LOWERS the magnitude of
the truly serious crimes. If you can expect the same punishment for something like defacing a web page
as you can for blowing up a car bomb, then that means
a car bomb suddenly isn't such a bad crime.
It's like saying Marijuana is the same thing as Heroin.
It doesn't make marijuana "worse", it implies that heroin
is somehow no more or less acceptable.
There might be parallels in the abortion==murder campaign as well.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Please reject all parts of Ashcroft's terrorism bill that deal with computer
use, as they are almost entirely misconceived, repressive and overly
punitive measures that have little if anything to do with any threat from
real terrorists. Computer professionals depend on knowledge and skill. Just
as medical students sometimes commit pranks, so do computer students. When
those pranks cause losses, those losses can be dealt with through
conventional legal penalties. But lumping them with the deadly acts of
terrorists is the surest way to alienate the good young minds we need in the
computer profession, particularly those with the knowledge of security
measures needed to keep our systems secure - which can only be gained by
testing the limits of those systems.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
>When deciding on a punishment, you have to decide what >the aim of punishment is and how best to achieve that aim.
The aim of any punishment in our current system
is to increase the revenue of the Prison Industrial Complex.
That's right, prisons are profitable, and the more people
they lock up, the more profitable they are. And the whole
time they can complain about how much it costs to incarcerate someone, without putting that costs side by
side with how much money goes INTO the prison system.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm sure all the hardened foreign *crackers* are just running in fear now that the US proposes stiffer penalties for attacking computers residing in.. *errhh.. wait a minute.. where is the geographic location of the machine with that destination IP address again?!... darn packet filters, anonymizers, and misconfigured routers. Geez, these guys must be routing through 20 machines or something.. *POOF* darn.. lost 'em again. Good thing we'll nail some clueless, immature middle/high-school/college kids for little mischievious acts, though. Gotta stop terror at it's source.
And writing viruses? Isn't that a 1st Amendment violation in the first place? The first 'viruses' were born in an academic environment surrounding the research of 'artificial life.' And ever consider that a binary sequence that represents a "virus" in the context of one operating environment could very likely be a benign set of instructions in another? (especially if you bitwise shift left or right or perform other transformations on the data such as compression). Try this if you have access to a windoze box: Load up a bunch of common virus scanners and then try to download some tarballs of your favorite source code. I guarantee you'll get "virus warnings" at random--some based on heuristics, some as direct matches. Computer viruses, like biological ones, can only co-exist with vulnerable hosts. Maybe instead we should outlaw operating systems without reasonable security and access controls. *cough*windows*cough*.
We might need some new laws to help fight terrorism, but this is NOT one of them. May I suggest: 1.) Repealing the restriction on US supported overseas assassinations 2.) Cockpit "airlock" (2 doors) and non-lethal defense mechanisms on all passenger aircraft 3.) More stringent background checks on immigrants and airport employees.
What I see, is more people getting laid off...
from the airlines
and the airplane makers
and the airports
What I see, is George Bush spouting more rhetoric...
things are gonna be hard
we have to make some sacrifices
go back to work and be productive
What I see, is executives of companies...
still getting big paychecks and bonuses
living in their big house
driving their big suv or lexus
hecho en mexico
What I see, is more laws taking away our rights...
turning us into a police state
protecting corporate interests
and making more laws from a knee jerk reaction
What I see, is a long road ahead of us...
where our fellow Americans die
to protect Starbucks and McDonalds
protecting our corporate profits and earnings
What I see, is the bomb being dropped...
but not by us
because we can't do that
we're too civilized
I hope we have something worth fighting for after everything is finished.
Hammer of Truth
From our proposed bill:
"SS 25. Federal terrorism offense defined
As used in this title, the term `Federal terrorism offense' means a violation of, or an attempt or conspiracy to violate-
...1030(a)(1), (a)(4), (a)(5)(A), or (a)(7) (relating to protection of computers)... "
And here are the sections from the US Code that it refers to:
"Sec. 1030. Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever -
(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization
or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct
having obtained information that has been determined by the
United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or
statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for
reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any
restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with reason to believe that such
information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United
States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully
communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated,
delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver,
transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted
the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully
retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or
employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected
computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and
by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains
anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing
obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value
of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period;
(5)
(A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program,
information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct,
intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected
computer;
(7) with intent to extort from any person, firm, association,
educational institution, financial institution, government
entity, or other legal entity, any money or other thing of value,
transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication
containing any threat to cause damage to a protected computer; "
now IANAL, but this seems to make the following things terrorism:
1) Getting or transmitting any information that can be a threat to national security via computer (ie classified stuff)
2) Knowingly and intentionally doing damage to a computer system of at least $5000
3) Making and spreading viruses and computer worms
4) Threatening to do any of the above (within federal jurisdiction), with the intent to do it.
That's my interpretation, and it's probably wrong. I'm mainly posting this for easy reference.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
As others have said, the punishment should fit the crime. If you walk into a bank and (this is probably a bad example) physically steal a box of credit cards, you most certainly would not get life in prison. But intoduce a computer into the mix, and suddenly you are an evil "hacker" deserving life in prison.
Computer crime should be a crime; however, the punishment should be fair. You can kill someone and get potentially 20 years, sometimes less. Kill a man's credit rating, get life? (I wonder if temporary insanity would be a valid plea in computer crimes?)
It seems that every time the internet is mentioned, everyone goes nuts. See the PGP story from earlier for a prime example. See all the other stories regarding encryption back doors etc.
Regarding issues such as this, my opinion is that the "hacker" (or "cracker" to be more appropriate) should be *appropriately* punished, and the company who was broken into should be investigated. If it turns out the exploit could have been prevented (eg, a patch has been available, or poor security measures were used), they should be held liable as well. This will be especially important when Passport starts to become popular... if fear of a bad reputation doesn't push companies to establish solid security/privacy policies, maybe fear of legal action will.
Software companies/service providers have been getting away with EULAs that allow them to be negligent, relieving them of any responsibility whatsoever. This will have to change. No other industry is run like this...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
This list hardly seems to encompass "most computer crimes". For instance merely accessing or stealing non-classified information is not a terrorist act. Nor does it include breaking encryption ala DMCA. Defacing websites is not a terrorist act unless the computer belongs to one of the above categories and changing the website results in nontrivial financial losses. Writing viruses/worms is not a terrorist act unless you intentionally use it in a way that damages "protected" computers. (From the wording, I wouldn't interpret this to include merely releasing it into the wild, but a judicial ruling would have to clarify that issue). The crimes they are signaling out are pretty significant stuff and not just any old act of hacking. Let's not further contribute to the FUD.
What follows are excerpts of the laws in question:
From The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 (Draft 2)
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/20010919_
Sec. 309: "...the term 'Federal terrorism offense' means a violation of, or an attempt or conspiracy to violate...1030(a)(1), (a)(4), (a)(5)(A), or (a)(7) (relating to protection of computers)..."
From US Code Title 18, Section 1030
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html
(a)(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(a)(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period;
(a)(5)(A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(a)(7) with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, educational institution, financial institution, government entity, or other legal entity, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to cause damage to a protected computer; shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section
Under the same Section, part (d)(e)(2) and (8): (2) the term "protected computer" means a computer -
- (A) exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the
United States Government, or, in the case of a computer not
exclusively for such use, used by or for a financial
institution or the United States Government and the conduct
constituting the offense affects that use by or for the
financial institution or the Government; or
- (B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or
communication;
(8) the term "damage" means any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information, that -The part about giving advice only applies to advice given while knowing or intending that the knowledge be used to violate the law.
The ATA advice clause appends Title 18, Sec 2339A to include expert advice and training as criminally punishable aid and federal terrorism offenses as crimes applicable to this section.
Also the law only applies to relatively major crimes (with perhaps a couple provisos), for a discussion see my earlier post.
If you talk to people about your plans to whack a goose, they can't convict you of conspiracy to commit goose-whacking because there's no law against conspiring to goose-whack.
I was under the impression that - at least back in the Vietnam Un-War era - there are/were blanket conspiracy statutes that made conspiracy to commit a crime (even a misdemeanor) a felony.
It was a particularly noxious law. In addition to upping the ante, it criminalized talking about a crime *without committing it*, and made hearsay admissible.
IANAL so maybe somebody who is can comment.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The ATA would allow life imprisonment as a possible punishment for some computer crimes, that doesn't mean it automatically gets applied. All other remedies still remain possible. In fact courts have a history of reducing punishments that are unduly harsh.
For a description of what those crimes actually are (as opposed to the article's FUD) see my earlier post.
I've been living and working in Japan this past year. I had been thinking about going back to the US and buying a house or some such.
Not after reading about this and the national ID card though. You all enjoy your fascist dictatorship. In the interests of myself and my family, I'm defecting -- to one of those "free" (as in speech) countries.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
now make hacking crimes retroactively punishable.
Isn't congress forbidden under the constitution to pass ex-post-facto legislation?
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
> Say someone hax0rs an air traffic
> control system, do they deserve life
> imprisonment?
Yes, they do. For attempted murder, not for
computer crime. They should be tried and executed
or imprisoned for the crime, not for the means.
If we raise the computer crime to the level of a
capital offense, we DIMINISH the meaning of the
capital offenses we already have.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Does willfully acting to violate the U. S. Constitution make Ashcroft guilty of treason?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
So only attacks against state and financial institutions, and computers used for interstate or foreign commerce and communication can be deemed terrorism.
You've mixed up one of your logical operators, there; there's a big difference between "and" and "or". The correct operator is "or". As you quoted the first time:
which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication
Only computers used for interstate communication, huh? That would be everything that has an IP address...
A close friend of mine spent 6 months in prison after plea-bargaining his case because he committed the destructive act of electronic graffitti.
Oh, and he was treated as an adult even though he was 16 at the time. If the case had gone to trial, he faced 30 years imprisonment and probably a $1 million fine.
He still has to pay a $20,000 fine. He's 18 now.
Kids will be reckless fuckheads. It's a given. There's no reason they need to be imprisoned for life just because of some stupid thing they did that the victims won't remember in 3 weeks anyway.
The laws they're being punished with today seem to have been written with terrorists in mind. Making them even more severe is grounds for every American to practice their 2nd Ammendment rights.
I have represented parties in civil lawsuits where CFAA violations have been pleaded as counterclaims. I am here to tell you that the courts have treated virtually ANY alleged unauthorized access of a computer as a CFAA violation that will be likely to survive a motion to dismiss and summary judgment. It is, to me, chilling that such naked allegations as "he wasn't supposed to do that" could be sufficient to put an individual away for life.
Indeed, only crackers who attack "protected systems" (meaning .gov and .mil boxen - not the d00d who hax0rz the average web site) appear to be in line to get their asses handed to them on a silver platter under this Act, and those provisions I can support. (Hell, those are about the only provisions I'd support ;-)
You are so wrong you can't believe it. The CFAA defines a "protected computer" to mean a computer that is used in interstate commerce. This means any computer connected to the internet or a modem.
I have litigated CFAA civil actions, and I am here to tell you that virtually ANY unauthorized access where virtually ANY valuable information is received, or where ANY valuable data is modified or changed is quite arguably sufficient to lay down a prima facie case.
This bill is as bad as you first thought it was.
How does this apply to:
open-relay abuse spam
I would think it would abolish it (for U.S. citizens)
Isn't retroactively changing the statute of limitations an "ex post facto" law and hence unconstitutional?
Any laywers care to comment?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Couldn't that be considered treason? That is punishable by DEATH (or life or any term of years).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Yes, the U.S. may be becoming a police state. Not only does the U.S. have at least three agencies that police the entire world, the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA, but the U.S. has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison of any country ever, in the history of the world.
Here are the official December 31, 2000 prison statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice. Sorry about the formatting. The lameness filter is lame. It won't let me post enough leading dots.
People in federal and state prisons... 1,312,354People in local jails... 621,149
People on probation... 3,839,532
People on parole... 725,527
Total number of citizens... 6,498,562
The total population of the United States, projected to September 24, 2001 at 6:34:55 PM PDT is 285,218,008. Therefore, 2.3 percent of the entire U.S. population is in prison or involved with the criminal justice system. But remember, many of those are babies or children. About 3.1 percent of all adult U.S. citizens are in prison, jail, or on probation or parole.
An April 20, 2000 ABC News article, U.S. Prison Population Rising says that the percentage of growth of the U.S. prison population is rising.
There is other evidence of social breakdown: An August 19, 1998 BBC News article, The United States of murder, says that the city with the highest murder rate, Washington, D.C., has a murder rate 170 times higher than the city with the lowest murder rate, Brussels, Belgium. The nine U.S. cities in this study of murder rates all were in the list of the 12 cities with highest murder rate.
There is evidence that the secret agencies of the U.S. government and the weapons manufactureres have too much control: What should be the Response to Violence? .
Bush's education improvements were
The article that started all this is largely FUD, and a poor representation of the legislation being past. If you are going to write to Congress at least read the intelligent posts on this page, if not the legislation itself. Making statements which are factually wrong will more than likely cause them to dismiss the whole letter without considering your opinion.
If you look around at the other posts, you'd realize these modifications only applies to 4 of the more severe computer crimes for which we have laws (though one can be legitimately concerned about stretching them to cover less serious crime than what were intended). Also it allows life sentences to be applied but it doesn't mandate them, and any applicable lesser sentence can also still stand. Ex Post Facto doesn't apply because it's not making things illegal retroactively, only removing the time limits on how soon actions that were already illegal can get prosecuted.
Finally, remember that the computer provisions are only a small part of ATA, and I for one don't mind tougher rules for kidnapping congressmen or attacking nuclear power plants, etc. Know what you are upset about and have good reasons why.
My brain is an organic computer.
Where do I file charges against John Ashcroft for assaulting my intelligence?
He's conflating vandalism ("willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property") with major violent crime by using the term "assault" in other than its normal legal sense - a threat or attempt to inflict offensive physical contact or bodily harm on a person (as by lifting a fist in a threatening manner) that puts the person in immediate danger of or in apprehension of such harm or contact.
In effect he's raising the status of a collection of hardware and software to the legal status of a person, if not trying to imbue it with human emotions.
In other words, he's making a total ass of himself. Let us strive to prevent him from doing the same to the legal code, shall we?
What more is there to say about a U.S. Attorney General who is more concerned about web pages being defaced than people being blown away by firearms, in the hands of convicted criminals and others who've been judged a danger by the courts?
Whistleblower protection with real teeth would be more effective in cleaning up inept government agencies. So would giving the federal Inspectors General the power to fire Federal employees. But no, Ashcroft's not asking for that.
..but passing this bill will turn us into terrorists.
I wonder how many other terrorist groups started out like this. It really puts things into perspective.
In retrospect, it's so obvious that we're becoming society's new scapegoat. Amazingly, some people have held that belief all along (Emmanuel Goldstein, since about 1985)
good argument, but the bill in question is specific about electronic devices.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
And projects like mozilla.org that have sections on "hacking the code" will become villified for contributing to terrorism. Welcome to the witch-hunts; i'm finding a new line of fucking work.
Yep, it looks as though the bean counters, bureaucrats and politicians have finally gotten a hold on the internet and technology. That's a sign that it has matured. It's less fun, less of a frontier and more of an institution. The people pushing this are fearful of change and of uncertainty. They seek to eliminate both at their source. In the short term, that will boost corporate profits. In the long run it will stifle innovation. It's a cheap shot to use the WTC attack as a justification for doing this.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
...until some other crime is committed, there was no victim of simply stealing the numbers.
And if I drive home drunk and get away with it, what's the harm?
But this law specifically makes giving hacking advice illegal, and classes it as terrorism. I don't think there is a similar law for murder.
This stuff is extremely dangerous. While the country is reeling from 9/11 Ashcroft and company are seeking to do an end run around due process, legislative considerations, the Bill of Rights and, potentially, the freedom and security of all of us. What does "terrorism" mean? Why, it means whatever Ashcroft and company say it means this week, or next week or next year. And of course all future definitions are retroactively effective. This week it covers amorphously "computer crimes" which we all know are so well defined there is no confusion there right? Anything and everything any of us geeks/nerds do is, or will be if this or that bill is passed, a "computer crime". If you somehow manage to escape the ever-broadening net of what is a computer crime and therefore "terrorism" then you better be real careful of who you trade code with or date or give tips to before you are accused of aiding and abetting a terrorist!
These people aren't fooling around. They can take everything you own and lock you up for as long as they wish by this proposal without even necessarily charging you!
Please, PLEASE pay attention and do what you can to fight this now while you still have the ability to do so. At this rate it will not be so easy very shortly.
Call your congress critters. Write editorials. Inform your friends. Demonstrate. Support any/all organizations fighting this before they get accused of aiding and abetting terrorists!
The time for vigilance is NOW.
Wow, that "IIS" sounds fantastic, since I need an elegant industry-standard application platform. Do you have any brochures?
Seriously, "assault" is an absurd concept to apply to a machine. Vandalism, certainly.
Is anyone else getting this feeling of being overwhelmed by sadness and pity? I'm a U.S. citizen, watching laws be considered that would have made the Brown Shirts proud. I'm a compassionate human being who was horrified by the terrible violence brought home, not only to my country, but to close friends of mine in NYC.
But nothing horrifies and saddens me more than seeing such laws even be CONSIDERED in the United States of America. In the U.S. I grew up believing in, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, such a law would have been laughed right out of the Capitol building. In the america I grew up believing in, Patrick Henry was one of our heroes, with his fiery "Give me liberty or give me death!" We even have a state whose motto is an even more extreme, "Live free or die!" And then at the slightest fear, at the slightest hint that the price of all this freedom - death, of course - might actually have to be paid, and these Free, Brave americans roll over like mewling puppies and - beg! - for the shackles to be applied. These horrible feats of mislegislation and unconstitutionality are not being forced through against opposition, they're tripping over themselves to write it because Americans are screaming for it.
So I don't know which I'm more ashamed of. Egotistical men with no understanding of their own margin of error, recklessly wielding powers they neither deserve nor understand. Or the people who are meekly letting them do it, because they're too afraid to stand up like men and retain their freedom. I'm going to bed now, and if I could cry I would. I'm just too appalled.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I work in the network management industry. we like to draw maps of networks (sometimes in pretty pictures).
its a frequent technique that you ping a whole subnet (or network range) to discover which boxes are alive, maybe which services run on each box, etc. to do this, you probe.
you might do a slight portscan by trying to discover if the box is a host or a router (or whatever). you may even do this in net.ranges that may or may not belong to you (perhaps you might overlap since you might be thinking of class-c when in fact, its subnetted larger or smaller than that and you didn't know that).
so if I discover a network (again, a fairly typical thing to do in the netmgt field) and I happen to set off some alarms, and someone gets overzealous, could I end up being "bubba's bitch in the big-house" for life?
doesn't the conceivable abuse of this law seem totally shocking to anyone in the computer industry?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
>> interstate or foreign commerce or communication
I'm reading Slashdot from the UK. So there's foreign communication going on. If someone hacks Slashdot, they have hacked a protected computer.
See also: Microsoft
I read an interesting statistic the other day, in the UK there's about £270,000,000 of credit-card fraud a year, of which only £7,000,000 happens without someone physically presenting a card in a shop - i.e. that 7 mil includes not just all the internet fraud but all the stuff on the telephone as well.
Of course this is all well known. Best way to hack into a network? Get a job there as a Janitor and find a computer that wasn't logged out of.
Anyhow, criminal Laws can be divided into two categories, I've always though:
Laws that prohibit things that are bad.
Laws that might make it easier to enforce the former laws.
So, killing people is bad, so it's illegal.
Owning a gun isn't bad, but making that illegal is believed to make it easier to enforce the killing people law.
Copyright theft is bad. Being able to back-up an acrobat document isn't bad, and in Russia is actually a right, but DCMA is supposed ot mkae it easier to enforce the "no stealing copyright materials" law.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Emphasis mine. In other words, a "protected computer" is any computer on the internet worldwide. Every computer on the internet is "used in interstate communication", isn't it?
Defacing websites is not a terrorist act unless the computer belongs to one of the above categories
Can you list any web site that *doesn't* belong in the "protected computer" category as outlined above?
Also, that under this act it won't be "defacing a web site", with the overtones of "graffati", it will now be defined as "attacking a protected computer", with the overtones of "terrorism".
It's all about perception in the public eye, the ordinary person will hear "attacked a protected computer", gasp, and call for a severe punishment, even if he has no idea what the wrongdoing entailed.
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
Sen. Phil Gramm,
. ht ml
a le rt.html
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison,
Rep. Joe Barton,
A second attack on the freedoms of Americans is happening right now, and you're on the front lines. Please help defend my freedom.
I know that times like these compel one to try to do something about it, to fight for our freedoms and security. I can only assume that this urge is what is driving the current push for laws that ostensibly increase our national security, but in fact restrict our freedoms without measurable increase in security.
You are doing more than your fair share to fight for the American way if you resist the urge to pass oppressive laws in a time of crisis. Please don't let national law be driven by current events. The strength of our nation lies in the freedom it grants its citizens, not the power of the government to control those citizens.
That said, I would like to list some laws which I believe are currently under consideration, and which I feel gravely impact the freedoms on which America is founded.
1) The Mobilization Against Terrorism Act a.k.a. Anti-Terrorism Act proposed by Attorney General Ashcroft. If I understand this bill correctly, it would for example treat computerized graffiti (defacing a governmental web page) as an act of terrorism punishable by life in prison. While defacing government property is obviously a crime, there are already laws on the books with reasonable punishments for these crimes. This bill also appears to violate our ex post facto protections granted by Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
2) Amendment S.A. 1562 of H.R. 2500, the Combating Terrorism Act, sections 816, 832, 833 and 834. This bill appears to grant broad rights to government agencies regarding computerized wire taps. There are already mechanisms for obtaining the right to a wire tap (warrants). I feel this act is an abridgement of our fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
3) The draft Public Safety and Cyber Security Enhancement Act (PSCSEA). Restrictions on cryptography can only hurt legitimate uses, never criminal or terroristic uses. Cryptographic algorithms are well known and software providing strong encryption is easily obtainable, regardless of US law. If its use is criminalized, will that stop criminals from using it? Also, encrypted communications can NOT be identified if the communicating parties use commonly known methods of steganography. The kind of messages that terrorists would send back and forth could easily be hidden undetectably in any public internet forum, video stream, photograph, sound or other file. Criminalizing encryption will only restrict law abiding citizens from protecting personal and financial information.
4) The draft legislation titled "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA). This law grants unprecented rights to intellectual property holders (including virtually eliminating Fair Use rights, first sale doctrine, and public domain rights). At the same time, it increases the cost of all computer systems and eliminates an entire computing industry founded on openness and freedom. (There is publically available software which allows one to operate a computer while legally paying no license fees. This software and any like it would be untenable since anyone could alter the program to disable the copy protections required under the SSSCA. This software (Linux) is an incredible boon to students, non-profit organizations, and low income users everywhere.)
I am a computer software developer. Intellectual property is my livelihood. Please follow the guidelines given by the founding fathers in our Constitution with respect to IP. The limited monopoly on intellectual property is a sacrifice we make to satisfy the real goal.
From the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The goal of intellectual property rights is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, not to guarantee income in perpetuity.
How you vote affects how I vote. Please help protect the freedom of American citizens.
Regards,
Bobby Martin
CEO NavTools Inc.
Here is a list of articles further enumerating the concerns about current legistlation:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
http://www.aclu.org/action/liberty107.html
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_wiretap_
Sure, and while we're at it, let's do away with all those confusing "assault", "aggravated assault", "manslaughter" and "murder" distinctions, and just have one charge of "violence" with a maximum sentence of life. After all, it's far too hard for elected legislators to have to deal with these issues. Far better to leave it to unelected judges who don't have to whore for votes every four years.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hold on, im in no way an expert on this, but isnt what this bloke Ashcroft is doing actually terrorism in itsself? I mean, reading a lot of posts on /. makes the under lying fear of those people making the posts widely seeable. A lot of people are actually afraid of this law, so isnt that terrorism? If not then how are we defining terrorism? And dont go and sya its different because only those who break the laws have to be afraid, i think by now that laws designed for one purpose can easily be made to fit all other purposes :/
Makes ya think doesnt it?
If you tape razor blades to the bottom of your car stereo, and someone breaks in and cuts him finger when stealing it you've broken the law in most place i.e. attractive nuscience laws. therefore if you use windoze are you guilty?
Seriously this had to happen, just look at your sever logs over the past month. I guess that this will prevent us from using an active defense on our machines. I was wondering what would happen if an request for defualt.ida fired a counter-attack script, now I know I go to jail for life!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"I don't believe that our definition of terrorism is so broad," said Ashcroft. "It is broad enough to include things like assaults on computers, and assaults designed to change the purpose of government."
Immediately after the bill was passed Ashcroft was arrested under terrorist charges under the very same bill, for "changing the purpose of government".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So, unfortunately, I guess that spamming is not going to be considered a terrorist act since it is done for financial gain? Damn, Ashcroft could have actually accomplished something useful here.
On a more serious note, I'm really worried about that first high school student who installs SETI@Home in the school computer lab who spends the rest of his life in jail because some clueless school administrator thinks that qualifies as "hacking".
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
as long as you are talking about becoming a perl monk, that's cool :)
-samThe REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
At one point, people laughed at the idea of outlawing a weed that grew naturally and profusely along the Potomac river (the one that runs through Washington, DC, America's capital, for the non-US and geographically challenged amoung us).
After a few years and a media blitz to create some uninformed public hysteria, workers were sent out to eradicate the weed, marijauna (notice the Spanish/Mexican pronunciation of the 'j' and try to guess who the real targets of the law were), and so began America's war on drugs. We still have laws and demonic misconceptions about a weed that produces a mild hallucagenic (sp?) that is no worse than alchohol, with people that the powers that be don't like going to jail for possessing.
Don't ever believe for one second that idiots and their laws will go away without a hard and sustained fight. Ashcroft, like most other leaders, is a meglomaniac. He believes that the world can be made safe if only he were allowed to be in controll. It's not that he is evil, it's just that he has an idea of what the world should be like, and he is motivated to make it that way. Unfortunately, the Taliban and BinLaden also have a vision and motivation. The only things seperating the two are our elected representatives, our right to be heard before laws are made, and our right to have our cases heard before a panel of our peers. These sort of laws attempt to make an end run around these protections.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
... they just got around to calling unsolicited e-mail an electronic attack (which I feel it is). I wouldn't mind having the Feds kick down doors and drag off the people that keep flooding my mailbox with e-mails they pretend I asked for.
I can see it now, the next set of anti-terrorist laws requiring a big brother program on all computers in the US. One where if you download a mp3 file off the internet or visit a hackers web site you'll get a message like this, "You have broken the US Anti-terrorist laws, an Anti-terrorist task force is being notified at this time. Please wait at this computer until they come and pick you up, any attempted to escape will be meet will extreme force. Thank you and have a nice day :) and remember big brother is always watching you." Boy I feel safer already.
All it takes to show "intent to distribute" is whatever the agents/judge think is more than one person can consume...
What is your argument here, that someone who doesn't have intent to distribute will be considered by a judge to have it? Show me one single case of an individual who spent a single day in jail over federal drug charges without distributing those drugs. Let alone life.
I don't agree with this nation's drugs laws, but they're simply not used to infringe upon your right to cultivate and consume cannibus in the privacy of your home without interference from the federal government. The constitution is cut and dry on this issue, the federal government does not have jurisdiction.
Further, I doubt there was ever a case where an individual spent life in prison based on state law for the private home cultivation and consumption of cannibus. Sure, it's technically illegal in some states, but so is doing 56 miles per hour in a 55 mile per hour zone. Hell, you could go to jail for failure to pay use tax on your internet purchases. Doesn't mean anyone ever has, or ever will.
I fully support repealing all drug laws on all levels of government. In fact, if I happened to live in one of those states which had jail time for personal home cultivation and consumption I'd be working on its repeal. But anyone who tries to tell you that you could spend life in federal prison over the private cultivation is simply pushing an agenda which I support through lies which I don't support.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
...It's a good example of people who broke a law because they wanted to get toasted...very little else. (The occasional "medical" case...) So many pro drug people make them sound like victim saints, and they occasionally need a reality check. I broke the law...I was prosecuted...I am a victim....right. It's not a hard law not to break folks...it's not like jaywalking or something. If you need it so bad that you can't wait until a legalization effort reaches a conclusion, and risk so much, then you've already made their point that you have a problem.
Why shouldn't people "get toasted"? Hows it hurting anyone else? It's a bad law! It was written in a different time (for different reasons, too, if you want to go into those...) and should be changed. Why should my tax dollars pay for thousands (probably millions) of people to be jailed for something I don't see as a crime? These people are in jail because they got caught doing something I do on a regular basis. Pot is less harmfull to your health than liquor, and doesn't lead to domestic violence. It leads to sitting around grinning. Whats the harm in that? You tell me why I shouldn't be allowed a bongrip after a long day a work! Now onto your next insight...
If the government hurts the people, their rage will shift to the government. They aren't stupid docile animals
Sadly, many people are stupid docile animals. You, for example, sugest that people who enjoy pot should "wait until a legalization effort reaches a conclusion". People accross america with that same mindset will happily bend over when GWB asks them to "sacrifice a little freedom". And you'll probably respond to this post and tell me marijuna is bad because "its the law". Are you sure people aren't stupid docile animals?
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
monetary or material gain to me != loss to the company. There is plenty of precedent for costing the company large amounts of money without any personal gain.
Schartz was tried under Oregon law not US, and without knowing more, I would doubt that attacking an internal network would meet the standard of "protected computer" which applies to (a)(4) as well as (a)(5)(A), although I didn't mention it in my summary. Secondly it's not clear that Schartz gained anything of value to him for what he did? If you wanted to attack him as terrorist I'd guarantee you a much harder case than the easy Oregon law.
You are confusing (a)(4) which deals with only my gains, with (a)(5)(A) which can deal with your losses. I'd dare say I could challenge your $5000 figure and the fact that your server at home qualifies as a "protected computer". Oh an also note that the damages only count intentional losses, losses dealing with unintentional/reckless acts fall under (a)(5)(B,C) which are not terrorist statutes. If you want to prosecute me for attacking you then there are other non-terrorism laws that make more sense and would be easier for you to win in court.
Computer intrusion can be a serious matter, but not all computer intrusions are serious matters.
Paraphrasing another post: I hack an air traffic control system and use it to crash an airplane into a heavily populated area. Thousands die. I can think of a large number of laws on the books right now that would put this person away for life, without ever going into computer crime laws.
Tougher computer crime legislation will do absolutely nothing to prosecute the guilty and only make life difficult for people committing harmless offenses, or even people who are completely innocent.
If someone breaks into someone else's computer, you prosecute them on the actual crimes they've commited, not just the act of breaking in. A kid spray paints his tag on a wall and he gets what? A fine? Community service? A kid defaces a web site and he faces years in federal prison sharing cells with rapists and child molestors who will get out before he does. Give me a break.
I never said it was a GOOD law...please...quote where I said that? Don't get overdefensive there...go have a "bongrip" and calm down. I am not going to defend things I didn't say.
No, you didn't say it was a good law. But you critsized people for breaking that law, and sugested they stop. This could either mean you (a) agree with the law, or (b) think people should be docile and do what they are told even if the law sucks.
I am kinda puzzled as to why you are still on the pot issue, as my second and third statements had exactly nothing to do with it.
Because it is an excellent example of citizens being docile in regard to losing their liberties, and that has very much to do with your comments.
My own views on it are definitely not what you would find favorable, but I can debate that subject with more arguments than just saying that it's against the law.
You say you can but you don't. The only solid argument you can make on the pot issue is "its the law". You mock people who are prosecuted under this law (" I broke the law...I was prosecuted...I am a victim....right.") but you can't give a good reason the law exists in the first place! Make your argument. I want to hear it!
Well...my take on it, is that there is a RIGHT way to approach a problem, and a wrong way. The wrong way to approaching the drug debate is by just doing them all over the place anyway, and then crying "victim" when you get caught. Actually..."sitting around grinning" seems to be a pretty docile approach...
I agree those who smoke "all over the place" are taking unneeded risks. I smoke in the comfort of my home. But people should be able to sit down in the park and have a puff! What happened to the pursuit of happiness?
Pot is ilegal for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is taxation. If pot was legal, people could grow it all over the place (it's not called 'weed' for nothing!). Liquor and Tobacco can't be so eaisily produced, so most consumers purchase those items through traditional means. As such, they pay taxes on it! Pot is so easy to grow, it would be much harder to tax.
This is another law that is to the advantage of government, not the people being governed.
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Have you looked at the case? Randall was violating Intel security policies. Intel said "stop it right now, please." Randall said "ok," the proceeded to continue violating the policies. Intel hit him hard. They were kind the first time. They weren't the second time. What more do you want?
The middle mind speaks!
If he attempts to violate the constitution?
-All your base are belong to the man.