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ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Justice contending that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act's criminal prohibitions have created a barrier for those wishing to conduct research and anti-discrimination testing online. The ACLU have pursued the matter on behalf of a group of academic researchers, computer scientists and journalists seeking to remove that barrier to allow for third-party testing and research into potential online discrimination. In a public statement the ACLU contend: "The CFAA violates the First Amendment because it limits everyone, including academics and journalists, from gathering the publicly available information necessary to understand and speak about online discrimination."
Probably the analogy would be the laws making it illegal to record abuses at places like food processing plants. There have been several states that have attempted to outlaw undercover video, after activists managed to get hired, and later released video of the horrible and illegal stuff that was going on in those plants. Or consider bans against recording the police on video, that wind up making any video recording of the police, even of the police committing a blatant crime, illegal.
That doesn't mean the law needs to go away entirely, but having some sort of affirmative defense should play a part, for instance.