Topic: SECURITY - on January 23, 2014 at 5:00:00 PM CET
The U.S. Crackdown on Hackers Is Our New War on Drugs
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 Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer (disclosure: I’m one of his lawyers on appeal) to Chelsea Manning to Jeremy Hammond. Not to mention less illustrious personalities and everyday users, such as people who delete cookies from their browsers.
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