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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.
You know what, this is precisely what happens when you decide corporations are people, and that money equals speech ... your democratic process becomes subverted by the will of corporations and ceases to be about representing the people.
It's pretty much all downhill from here.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't think that people are wanting his actions to be totally legal so much as just having reasonable punishment. I think naming it Aaron's law is to demonstrate that it is a means of preventing the abuse of the CFAA in the way it was used against Aaron.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.