RE: publicly available resources and the law

["rain.forest.puppy" <rfpuppy () iname com>]

This is a pretty interesting topic, so I just wanted to share some info I
found RE: computer crime laws in Illinois, US:

"Access" is defined as means to use, instruct, communicate with, store
data in, retrieve or intercept data from, or otherwise utilize any
services of a computer. (I think portscanning would fall in that)

COMPUTER TAMPERING:
A person commits the offense of computer tampering when he knowingly and
without authorization of a computer's owner, or in excess of the authority
granted to him, when he accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or
any part thereof, or a program or data (and possibly obtains data or
services).

(There's also a mention of "accesses and alters computer program or
data"...if you have a good prosecutor perhaps just the fact that the logs
are altered (appended) could fall under this)

(Now, of course, there's the issue of owner's authorization...but notice
the clause 'in excess of the authority granted to him'.  I like to believe
use of of a SMTP service *NOT* defined as an MX entry and the use of a DNS
service *NOT* listed as a NS in DNS is unauthorized--however, web services
are a little more fuzzy...http://www.domain.com is an authorized
webservice? What about http://domain.com?  Or http://www1.domain.com?
Perhaps 'authorization', as stated above, could mean by suppling
authorization...if you don't need to supply authorization (web), does that
imply authorization by owner?  does anyone know of any precedence on
this?)

PENALTY OF COMPUTER TAMPERING:
-Class B misdemeanor for just accessing.
-Class A misdemeanor (1st)/ Class 4 felony (2nd+) for accessing and
        obtaining data.
-Class 4 felony (1st)/ Class 3 felony (2nd+) for deleting/altering data,
        any physical or logical (<-programs) damage, or running any type of
        'program' (set of instructions....including shell commands like 'ls',
        etc)

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Now, from what nmap does, I'd consider it just accessing without obtaining
data, and would peg it as a class B misdemeanor.  Perhaps the fact that
banners are sent by the system might upgrade it to class A misdemeanor.

And of course, penalites differ per state.  This is (old?) info from
www.eff.org, found at:

www.eff.org/pub/Legal/comp_crime_us_state.laws

Cheers,
.rain.forest.puppy.