Aaron's Law Would Revamp Computer Fraud Penalties 163
An anonymous reader writes "Two U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill that would prevent the Department of Justice from prosecuting people for violating terms of service for Web-based products, website notices or employment agreements under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). On Thursday, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, and Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, introduced Aaron's Law, a bill aimed at removing some types of prosecutions under the CFAA."
The bill is of course named for Aaron Swartz.
Re:Not good enough. (Score:4, Informative)
the broken justice system is the reason that we have more people in prison per capita than any other civilized nation on Earth
More than any [slashdot.org] other nation on Earth. Civilized or not. We have our own color on the map.
Re:Not good enough. (Score:3, Informative)
CFAA is bad and should be repealed (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. The true problem is not the plea bargain system, its the fact that the badly and loosely drafted CFAA passed by politicians allowed the prosecutor to file so many ridiculous charges against Aaron in the first place.
Here's a summary of the charges Aaron faced, from wiki [wikipedia.org]:
On July 11, 2011, Swartz was indicted in Federal District Court on four felony counts: wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer. On September 12, 2012, the prosecution filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts.
Seth Finkelstein analysed the charges explained what it meant [sethf.com]:-
And as I've said before - they don't like him. They really don't like him. Previously the indictment had alleged four "counts" of different legal violations each, making four felonies in total. There are now 13 felony counts in the new indictment, derived from claims of multiple instances of breaking those four laws. In specific:
Wire Fraud - 2 counts
Computer Fraud - 5 counts
Unlawfully Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer - 5 counts
Recklessly Damaging a Protected Computer - 1 count
It's beyond my pay grade to figure out how many years in prison that all could be, when taking into account the complexities of sentencing law. Let's leave it at a large scary number. Enough to ruin someone's life.
CFAA is too loosely drafted, provides for punishments grossly exceeding the nature of the crime, with no sense of proportionality and is abusive. That is the real problem.