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Aaron's Law Is Doomed and the CFAA Is Still Broken
I Ate A Candle (3762149) writes Aaron's Law, named after the late internet activist Aaron Swartz, was supposed to fix U.S. hacking laws, which many deem dated and overly harsh. But the bill looks certain to wither in Congress, thanks to corporate lobbying, disagreements in Washington between key lawmakers and a simple lack of interest amongst the general population for changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Representative Zoe Lofgren blamed inactivity from the House Judiciary Committee headed up by Representative Bob Goodlatte, which has chosen not to discuss or vote on Aaron's Law. There is still an appetite for CFAA reform, thanks to complaints from the security community that their research efforts have been deemed illegal acts, perversely making the internet a less secure place. But with the likes of Oracle trying to stop it and with Congress unwilling to act, change looks some way away.
What did you expect from an oligarchy?
The fascists are never going to give up power now that they have it.
And, at this point, it is fairly obvious that both parties are more than willing to vote in favor of fascism.
This is all about government control and secrecy, and if anybody is going to hack into anything with permission it's the NSA et al.
Pathetic, in my lifetime, America has become a joke -- face it, you suck, your government sucks, and you've turned your backs on rights and freedoms.
America deserves what it gets at this point, and deserves a massive amount of contempt and distrust from the rest of the world.
You have become the fucking problem.
Apparently Oracle has sunk $1.36 mil into lobbying against this because they are using the CFAA to "protect trade secrets." Presumably they're holding the threat of ridiculous prison sentences over their employees' heads to keep them from leaking any of Oracle's precious bodily fluids, but someone must have some idea of what it is that Oracle is trying to hide, even if you all don't know the particulars. Spill.
Is it some special sauce for tricking state governments into contracting with Oracle when they could be working with a different, competent company? Or into buying ten times as many licenses as they actually need? Doubtless there's some reason why Oracle is as rich as it is...
CFAA may be broken but what Aaron did was still wrong and I don't think the law should be changed to make his behavior legal, which is the impression I get when the bill is named after him. I'm sure many others feel the same way. Sure, Swartz will be missed and many people are blaming themselves for not recognizing the signs of mental illness and helping him before he killed himself. However, I'd do the same thing MIT did if I discovered some creep walking in off the street and causing all the researchers to lose access to a major database, kept evading blocks over a period of months, and broke into a wiring closet to hook up his own equipment. Likewise, if some creep was trying to "keepgrabbing" my entire database, creating more traffic than all of my other customers combined, and jeopardizing my relationship with one of my biggest customers, you bet your ass I'd call the cops. Somehow, however, Swartz apologists keep trying to hitch this wagon up to the "I didn't read a web sites ToS and now I have a felony conviction" cause.
When your lawmakers are low IQ low education level types that put more weight in the opinions of the lobbyists that stuff their pockets full of money... You will NEVER get fair and balanced laws.
DMCA and PATRIOT are two prime examples of how the people on capitol hill work. most of those idiots do not even READ the laws they are voting on.
The proper answer still remains, if you want to be a white hat, you MUST remain anonymous when you release any information. DO NOT ever let someone know who you are because good deed will be punished harshly by the scared and uneducated lawmakers.
And the laws are only going toget worse as big business buy even more legislation to shore up out of date business practices.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Lets say someone had little security, akin to not locking the door, and someone gets into the system and seals data. That is the same as if someone just walked in and made photocopies of all the data and left the building.
If they needed to break in, where the computers are in a more compromised state then it is breaking and entering.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Apparently the young man committed suicide due to the threat of severe charges and punishments. The real challenge is the way the legal system works. The common tactic is to charge a defendant with a stack of really off the wall charges and force a plea bargain for much more accurate charges. A person who really would face a year or two in prison is faced with a prosecutor threatening 60 years or more. Many personalities will fold and make a deal. Addicts are particularly vulnerable as they have urgent desires to get out and get loaded as soon as possible. There is also a public display element in that convictions and sentences make great newspaper fodder but inmates appeal and bargains are struck to avoid a retrial in many cases. Think about it. A bad person breaks into a home with people sleeping at night. The charge could be burglary which usually gets one probation for the first offense. Or the exact same crime can be called home invasion and the person may be in prison for 75 years. The prosecutor says plead to burglary and we won't charge you with home invasion. The bad actor doesn't want to die in prison so even if innocent will tend to plead guilty. So the only real cure is to require all charges to be filed before anyone interviews the bad actor. Then disallow any changing of the charges. Or we could dump the entire idea of allowing plea bargains.
Fine, no. But worth 30 years in prison when even all the wronged parties did not want to continue the prosecution. FUCK NO.
Associating the act with Aaron Swartz such as calling it Aaron's Law is a huge mistake because any congressman that votes for it will have to consider how his opponents would use that against him in the next election. Keep in mind that the people who fund election campaigns are the kind that would look upon Aaron as a simple thief and menace.
The CFAA certainly needs to be fixed, but a better way would be to not mention Aaron Swartz and rather call it something like "CFAA Modernization Act"
But he had every right to attach his computer to that network. MIT has (or had?) a free and open network. It was open to everyone, not just students, faculty and guests. So there was no problem with him connecting to their network, or stashing his computer there.
JSTOR's contract with MIT allowed access to their papers to anyone on MIT's network. Not limited to students and faculty. Just anyone coming from their network. So there was nothing illegal about him downloading papers from JSTOR.
However, JSTOR's terms of service limited the number of papers one could download in a given period of time. I think it was something like 25 a day. Aaron, however, wrote a script that would download all 4 million in rapid succession.
The only thing "wrong" that he did was violate JSTOR's terms of service. Yes, if everyone did that the system would collapse. What he did amounts to bad manners. For that he deserves to be threatened with up to 50 years in jail? That's the kind of abuse Aaron's Law is intended to stop.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Fine, no. But worth 30 years in prison when even all the wronged parties did not want to continue the prosecution. FUCK NO.
Lets be completely honest about this.
He was neither convected nor sentenced. The claim that he faced 35 years jail time is highly disingenuous since he had been offered a plea bargain that carried only 6 months in a low security prison, but he turned it down.
The story after his suicide was one disingenuous load of crap after another. If the guy killed himself because of the jail time he faced, then even 6 months was too much for him.
I dont see how 6 months is out of line for the crimes that he admitted to committing.
"His name was James Damore."
I dont see how 6 months is out of line for the crimes that he admitted to committing.
What crimes? He violated the system's terms of service. Purely a civil matter.
Have gnu, will travel.
There are a thousand laws where "lack of interest amongst the general population" was no obstacle to getting them passed.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Not crimes, civil charges that were entirely disputable.
His 2 counts of wire fraud were not 'civil charges' -- nor were his 11 criminal violations of the computer fraud and abuse act.
How exactly do you think? Is it that if you know that you dont know anything about a subject that you will act like an expert anyways because you really feel that you are THAT fucking special as to not actually need to know anything at. fucking. all?
"His name was James Damore."