Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site. Or you could be sent to federal prison if your boss told you to work but you used the company’s computer to check sports scores online. Imagine that Eric Holder’s Justice Department urged Congress to raise penalties for violations, making them felonies allowing three years in jail for each broken promise. Fanciful, right?
Think again. Congress is now poised to grant the Obama administration’s wishes in the name of “cybersecurity.”
The little-known law at issue is called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was enacted in 1986 to punish computer hacking. But Congress has broadened the law every few years, and today it extends far beyond hacking. The law now criminalizes computer use that “exceeds authorized access” to any computer. Today that violation is a misdemeanor, but the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to meet this morning to vote on making it a felony.
The problem is that a lot of routine computer use can exceed “authorized access.”
Some of those issues were headed off, but that’s only some and who knows if the amendments will survive. Here’s the latest.
In # 19 JimD said: If you want to get off Jury Duty, ask the officials about “Jury Nullification” and they won’t ask you again !!!
My friend [name withheld] told my wife when she was called on jury duty:
You people need to use your brains, this knee-jerk idiocy only makes you look stupid.
You can’t lie in a letter mailed in the post, you know, it’s called mail fraud. This primarily just extends postal laws to the internet.
I’d like someone to show me where you are allowed to do any of these things through regular mail. You can’t claim a false identity in a mail to someone, you can’t lie in mail to someone, you can’t make false claims in mail, and the list goes on. Mail fraud is also a very, very serious charge, and so should email violations.
I’ve argued publicly that we should just create .USPS email that is regulated, and let the rest of the web be as crazy as it likes. That way you can have regulated legal email on one hand with laws protecting it, and still let the web be as wild and wooley as it likes.
#6 make up for some of your ignorant sheepleness and donate to the ACLU
The ACLU only persues cases that are within it’s agenda. Ever hope to see in your lifetime the ACLU standing up for the 2nd or 10th Amendments?
The Shelly quote was beautiful.
Isn’t there a quote that talks about a future time when EVERYTHING is illegal?
Faxon: Does this mean you can now die a happy man?
Obama’s website says Obamacare would reduce the deficit. So 3 years in jail, perhaps starting now.
msbpodcast–so eloquent, so off point. What’s up wid dat? And of course, the subsidiary: how come when you are on point you make no sense at all? What kind of binary gate is that?
Ha, ha. But I’ve been lulled into digressing myself.
Yes—words have a meaning==and they are as defined. The law uses words to define what is legal and illegal and society defines what laws actually are enforced through various mechanisms, mostly down to funding.
Seems like so much of life is defined by…..money.
Same as it ever was.
If I whacked my computer with a baseball bat, would they know? If all other analysis fails try urinallysis.
Makes sense. There have been mail fraud laws for ~ 100 years.
Will it still be legal to go to images-dot-google-dot-com and search on “turd”? Can you then legally send the results to flag@whitehouse.gov?
Should be 0011 0011 above the bars.
jr
#24 He didn’t care that Dumbya passed similar laws because the ACLU was there to help him. He only moaned because its master told it to do so.
And Dullass, keep showing what a pathetic sheeple you are. It’s highly entertaining
Quit your bitching and see if Michele Obama is abusing her vacation privileges.
Forget Obama, arrest Al Gore first.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/28/video-analysis-and-scene-replication-suggests-that-al-gores-climate-reality-project-fabricated-their-climate-101-video-simple-experiment/
You anti-government types should at least make sense when you complain, otherwise it exposes your stupidity.