This was actually the motivation for me to create this blog in the first place (before it is lawfully illegal to exercise your first amendment rights online)
“The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the most outrageous criminal law you’ve never heard of,” Tim Wu,
a Columbia law professor and pioneer of network neutrality, wrote in
the New Yorker. “It bans ‘unauthorized access’ of computers, but no one
really knows what those words mean.”
Among the many additions, the new CFAA draft expands the number of
ways one could be found guilty by punishing anyone who “conspires to
commit” violations in the same way as those that have already
“completed” the offense, also adding computer crimes as a form of
“racketeering activity” to allow the Department of Justice to hit computer criminals with further charges in court.
But what’s perhaps most troubling is how the new CFAA bill actually expands
the law to include accessing information for an “impermissible
purpose,” which means even if you have the right to access the
information in the first place, it’s still considered a crime if someone
deems you are misusing your access in some way.
According to law expert Orin Kerr, the language in the new CFAA would
make it a felony to “lie about your age on an online dating profile if
you intended to contact someone online and ask them personal questions,”
or if you violate the Terms of Service on a government website.
(Studies show ~70% of people on online dating sites lie about something - usually
their age or weight. Also, 99+% of people never read ToS notices)
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