The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2014/01/using-computer-drug-war-decade-dangerous-excessive-punishment-consequences/

By Hanni Fakhoury
Wired.com
01.23.14

Before Edward Snowden showed up, 2013 was shaping up as the year of 
reckoning for the much criticized federal anti-hacking statute, the 
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA"). The suicide of Aaron Swartz in 
January 2013 brought the CFAA into mainstream consciousness, so Congress 
held hearings about the case, and legislative fixes were introduced to 
change the law.

Finally, there seemed to be a newfound scrutiny of CFAA prosecutions and 
punishment for accessing computer data without or in excess of 
"authorization" - which affected everyone from Chelsea Manning to Jeremy 
Hammond to Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer (disclosure: I'm one of his lawyers 
on appeal). Not to mention less illustrious personalities and everyday 
users, such as people who delete cookies from their browsers.

But unfortunately, not much has changed; if anything, the growing 
recognition of the powerful capabilities of modern computing and 
networking has resulted in a "cyber panic" in legislatures and prosecutor 
offices across the country. Instead of reexamination, we’ve seen 
aggressive charges and excessive punishment.

This cyber panic isn’t just a CFAA problem. In the zeal to crack down on 
cyberbullying, legislatures have passed overbroad laws criminalizing 
speech clearly protected by the First Amendment. This comes after one 
effort to use the CFAA to criminalize cyberbullying -- built on the 
premise that violating a website’s terms of service was unauthorized 
access, or the equivalent of hacking - was thrown out as 
unconstitutionally vague.

[...]

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