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Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#71

Post by tphyahoo2 »

FDSGSG wrote: post #65
tombert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and as someone who grew up on Something Awful and 4chan I'm not familiar with the concept of hyperbole and sarcasm, but keep in mind that a lot of people on HN speak English as a second language, or just have more trouble picking up on sarcasm in general, and as such it might come off as a legitimate accusation. I'm not trying to be the tone police, I don't really care, I was just explaining why you might have…

English is a third language for me, I would expect that regardless of language everyone can understand the concepts of sarcasm and irony if they're willing to spend any time thinking about what they are reading. There's literally zero context to suggest that I might be serious in accusing another poster of being a pedophile, even if they were it wouldn't make sense for me to randomly drop that.

I think it's common for non-neurotypical folks to struggle with sarcasm and irony. Even for neurotypicals, it can go over your head because it's hard to tell tone from a text.

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#72

Post by tombert »

FDSGSG wrote: post #65
tombert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and as someone who grew up on Something Awful and 4chan I'm not familiar with the concept of hyperbole and sarcasm, but keep in mind that a lot of people on HN speak English as a second language, or just have more trouble picking up on sarcasm in general, and as such it might come off as a legitimate accusation. I'm not trying to be the tone police, I don't really care, I was just explaining why you might have…

English is a third language for me, I would expect that regardless of language everyone can understand the concepts of sarcasm and irony if they're willing to spend any time thinking about what they are reading. There's literally zero context to suggest that I might be serious in accusing another poster of being a pedophile, even if they were it wouldn't make sense for me to randomly drop that.

> There's literally zero context to suggest that I might be serious in accusing another poster of being a pedophile, even if they were it wouldn't make sense for me to randomly drop that.

Sure, but I think you're overestimating the integrity of the internet if you think that people don't just drop random pedophile accusations for folks that they disagree with. I'm not saying it's "fair", because I get that you were just trying to make a rhetorical point, but I'm saying that people on the internet are often douchebags, ruining a lot of the fun for us. I love edgy humor and sarcasm, between my wife and I we make a ton of off-color jokes, but I usually keep those offline because I don't want to group in with the awful people who misuse them.

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#73

Post by infogulch »

Wow this is the same case that came up two years ago, where LinkedIn tried to argue that a violation of the ToS was CFAA. "Court: Violating a site’s terms of service isn’t criminal hacking" [0]. I made a comment at the time [1]:

> So Microsoft chose a method of authorization that is unfit for the purpose of keeping people they don't want to have access out of their system. "But but but how else would they keep people off?" I don't know, but it doesn't matter. Make people sign a contract under supervision of a notary, or validate their drivers license, or whatever. The fact that Microsoft is too lazy to implement a solution that effectively implements their desired policy isn't material to what the actually implemented policy enables.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738180

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22745104

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#74

Post by sokoloff »

FDSGSG wrote: post #65
tombert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and as someone who grew up on Something Awful and 4chan I'm not familiar with the concept of hyperbole and sarcasm, but keep in mind that a lot of people on HN speak English as a second language, or just have more trouble picking up on sarcasm in general, and as such it might come off as a legitimate accusation. I'm not trying to be the tone police, I don't really care, I was just explaining why you might have…

English is a third language for me, I would expect that regardless of language everyone can understand the concepts of sarcasm and irony if they're willing to spend any time thinking about what they are reading. There's literally zero context to suggest that I might be serious in accusing another poster of being a pedophile, even if they were it wouldn't make sense for me to randomly drop that.

The default interpretation of written language is direct rather than ironic or sarcastic.

With “there’s literally zero context to suggest…”, it’s not unreasonable for some to conclude that you were being serious (particularly in light of the general decline of “comments online always make sense in context, so if it doesn’t, you should read deeper”)

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#75

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bitwize wrote: post #67
PeterisP wrote: post #7

It's not being talked about because there's no evidence of "new CFAA interpretation" until the court says something like that. It's very common for parties to try and argue all kinds of extreme interpretations of law that might favor their case, with the expectation that it most likely will be refused but hey, it's worth to try; but they are not newsworthy until/unless the court actually considers the argument as val…

This is like when Oracle argued that APIs can be copyrighted. Nobody was scared until the CAFC agreed.

> This is like when Oracle argued that APIs can be copyrighted. Nobody was scared until the CAFC agreed.

Which is the appropriate time to get scared. If you took half seriously the bogus theories that are floated in legal complaints, even restricting one to those penned by reputable lawyers, you'd swiftly conclude your car is a hippopotamus.

Ours courts are adversarial. Both sides are trying novel arguments. Through this, the law is actually strengthened--the court dismissing the argument leaves a precedent where, previously, there may not have been one.

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#76

Post by morpheuskafka »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #35

Well, in the video of the hearing you posted earlier hiQ's counsel said an IP block is not akin to a password. The court added that IP addresses do not identify people. As such IP blocks ban computers not people. There was also suggestion that the "access control" only relates to the manner of access; people can easily change IP addresses. The court seemed to agree with that argument. hiQ's counsel argued that a "gat…

> As such IP blocks ban computers not people.

As another example, many websites block their customers when they are connected to a VPN but have no intention of prohibiting those people from access generally.

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#77

Post by djrogers »

Key mis-statement here:

"under new CFAA interpretation"

There has been no 'new' interpretation, nor is it likely that there will be. This is merely one of a number of arguments put forward by LinkedIn's counsel during a civil case. All kinds of crazy poop gets put forward in those.

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#78

Post by Dylan16807 »

ravenstine wrote: post #51
edejong wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would start with us software engineers to be more exact in our communications. For an engineering discipline, we’re terrible at it. Take your example. I don’t know whether a web page is encrypted. I do however know whether the transmission of one request of some website contents to a specific web browser is. But that won’t yet tell me whether the communication between me and the website has stayed confidential bet…

Whether data through an encrypted channel remains confidential isn't really relevant to my point. I didn't say "confidential", I said "encrypted". The distinction you are making with encryption and confidentiality seems conflated; if the channel is uses encryption, then the data is by virtue encrypted. It's another story if we are talking about data arriving from any channel with another layer of encryption for confi…

It's basically meaningless to talk about whether something is encrypted without the "from who" factor. Otherwise you might as well rot-13 it. If you want to use such a narrow definition of 'encrypted', then it doesn't matter if the lawyer knows the answer.

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#79

Post by colejohnson66 »

wgx wrote: post #49
monkeynotes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any headline I see with a question in that manner I don't click on. I know they will conclude with either "we don't know" or "no". It's just not worth reading unless you are interested in two sides of an argument but generally these articles are cheap fluff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

“Is ‘Betteridge's law of headlines’ actually real?”

Re: Using a VPN could become a criminal offence under new CFAA interpretation

#80

Post by ravenstine »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #78
ravenstine wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether data through an encrypted channel remains confidential isn't really relevant to my point. I didn't say "confidential", I said "encrypted". The distinction you are making with encryption and confidentiality seems conflated; if the channel is uses encryption, then the data is by virtue encrypted. It's another story if we are talking about data arriving from any channel with another layer of encryption for confi…

It's basically meaningless to talk about whether something is encrypted without the "from who" factor. Otherwise you might as well rot-13 it. If you want to use such a narrow definition of 'encrypted', then it doesn't matter if the lawyer knows the answer.

No, the answer is way simpler than you are making it out to be.

Is the data in a TLS connection transformed in such a way that it would make it difficult for an intermediary to figure out the plain information being sent?

If so, the data is in fact encrypted. Where are you getting this idea that encryption is more than that? That is by definition what encryption is, and everything else is just approaches and security layers on top of it. You don't have to like the encryption method, you don't have to care who it's from, you don't have to care about anything else. Encryption is encryption even if it's as pointless as a caesar cipher.

And yeah, there's things like certificates and CAs with HTTPS, but that's totally secondary to the encryption part. No one would bother with HTTPS if it couldn't establish encrypted connections.

If a lawyer or a judge doesn't understand that they themselves are frequently using encryption when they use the internet, that's a problem. They don't need to care about the nitty gritty details that you and others bring up. If they view encryption as something that only bad guys use, why should they be a part of the judicial system in the year 2021?

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