The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is Stifling Security and Individual Rights
<p>The word hack has come to take on new meaning since the advent of the Internet. Once used to connote a violent often illegal attempt to gain access to a physical or digital space, the word hack has evolved to incorporate several positive connotations. Hack-ers locate and disarm computer bugs and viruses. Lifestyle hacks purport to improve our everyday efficiency and make us as individuals happier. Hack-tivists use digital town squares to spread messages of social change, including promoting free speech, human rights, and freedom of information among other political and social agendas. Yet our system of laws has yet to catch up to these myriads of new variations of the word hack resulting in absurd often draconian prosecutions of some, while others face no prosecution at all. The law most frequently applied for these prosecutions is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a 1986 Federal law that makes it a crime to access a protected computer without authorization or to exceed a user’s authorized access to obtain information. After nearly 30 years, the arbitrariness of the law’s application will finally be adjudicated by the Supreme Court this fall.</p>
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