Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#2Related: "Aaron Swartz, Vindicated" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394974
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#3Related: "Aaron Swartz, Vindicated" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394974
Also related: "US Supreme Court Restricts Scope of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act [pdf]"
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#4Generally good news. I just hope they have specific laws about abusing government data. For example, the LEO taking money to do searches of the database and releasing that otherwise protected. information.
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#5The key takeaway for me is how this decision affects port scanning. According to the article:
> Van Buren is really good news for port scanning, for example: so long as the computer is open to the public, you don’t have to worry about the conditions for use to scan the port.
As a frequent user of nmap, this is good to hear.
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#6This ruling is really confusing for me. So I feel pretty strongly that what van Buren did is a massive abuse of authority and it warrants punishment. Yet so many people I usually agree with (SCOTUS judges, EFF, privacy lawyers) are all calling this a win.
Am I missing something? To me, this ruling means that if a person is granted technical access to a computer system, then that person cannot be held criminally liable for anything they do with access to that system, even if the owner explicitly prohibits it.
In other words, lets say I work at a gay hookup website and they grant me access to their production database as part of my job. If I start selling off information about user to third parties (say journalists), how can that be legal?
Aside, I do understand and agree with the argument allowing for spidering and screen scrapping. Like, if I buy a subscription to an online parts catalog, I should be able to use a bot to access that data in the same ways a human could.
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#7This ruling is really confusing for me. So I feel pretty strongly that what van Buren did is a massive abuse of authority and it warrants punishment. Yet so many people I usually agree with (SCOTUS judges, EFF, privacy lawyers) are all calling this a win. Am I missing something? To me, this ruling means that if a person is granted technical access to a computer system, then that person cannot be held criminally liabl…
> To me, this ruling means that if a person is granted technical access to a computer system, then that person cannot be held criminally liable for anything they do with access to that system
That is not the meaning of the ruling. Nothing precludes trying someone for other crimes.
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#8This ruling is really confusing for me. So I feel pretty strongly that what van Buren did is a massive abuse of authority and it warrants punishment. Yet so many people I usually agree with (SCOTUS judges, EFF, privacy lawyers) are all calling this a win. Am I missing something? To me, this ruling means that if a person is granted technical access to a computer system, then that person cannot be held criminally liabl…
The guy was also convicted of wire fraud and bribery. Those charges were not at question in this decision. This decision only says that looking up records you have access to is not hacking.
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#9This ruling is really confusing for me. So I feel pretty strongly that what van Buren did is a massive abuse of authority and it warrants punishment. Yet so many people I usually agree with (SCOTUS judges, EFF, privacy lawyers) are all calling this a win. Am I missing something? To me, this ruling means that if a person is granted technical access to a computer system, then that person cannot be held criminally liabl…
In your example, the information you sell would still be illegal, it just wouldn't have the added crime of hacking aka "unauthorized access" attached to it.
People are calling this a win because the CFAA, as it used to be interpreted, would have had you potentially charged for changing the url of this post from 'https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27389500' to this 'https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=waffles'. This allowed cops/feds to charge you with crazy high penalties if they really wanted to make you sweat, see Aaron Schwartz
Some of the most memorable SCOTUS cases had less than noble test cases (ever hear of Miranda rights? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_v._Arizona). SCOTUS isn't deciding if the defendant is a dirt bag or not, just if the very specific law is valid/applied correctly
Re: Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA
#10This ruling is really confusing for me. So I feel pretty strongly that what van Buren did is a massive abuse of authority and it warrants punishment. Yet so many people I usually agree with (SCOTUS judges, EFF, privacy lawyers) are all calling this a win. Am I missing something? To me, this ruling means that if a person is granted technical access to a computer system, then that person cannot be held criminally liabl…
Id agree all this means a bent cop got off on a technicality and the tabloid press get a free pass.