Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Where Everyone is Always Guilty / by kevin murray

Government is power and government is force, and the laws that so many people think are set for their benefit, are always and without exception a two-edge sword, in which, laws poorly written and structured in such a way that the government can prosecute whomever that they want, whenever that they want, is nothing but tyranny upon the citizens of this great land.

 

Perhaps there were good intentions behind the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, perhaps not, but in any event it is the law of the land, and in a day and age in which virtually everyone that isn't debilitated or a disinterested Senior Citizen, or living in the outback, and thereby completely off the grid, than you as a matter of course are engaging with the internet on a constant basis through whatever smart devices that you prefer and therein lies the problem with this law.

 

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) contains a lot of verbiage covering all sorts of things, but essentially the most dangerous activities that it can foist upon the unsuspecting American public is that it prohibits access to a computer "without authorization" or "exceeding authorized access", so that all of those Terms and Conditions that you see on social media sites, or access to particular internet sites, and so forth, that nobody ever reads, contains language in regards to "conditional usage" of such a website, which, of course, ties into the CFAA.

 

While it certainly makes sense that you would want to stop unauthorized access to computers, such as those that are intimately involved in hacking activities, or up to a general no-good, the law as written is so broad, that just about anybody accessing the internet in the normal course of events, is potentially subject to having violated such access, because of the global nature of the internet, which invariably means that computers and information are connected to each other, and some computers and connections are government connected, or foreign connected, or cross State lines, in which any of these things can be construed by aggressive governmental authorities to have infringed upon this law.

 

The government's long and powerful prosecutorial arm as utilized today, has a insidious part to it, which is, by the very virtue of being able to reach out and to snag just about anyone off of this nebulous CFAA law, that this sort of indictment, allows the government to pressure those arrested or charged, to cooperate with the governmental desires or decrees.  This means that those that are an inconvenience to the government, or a pest to the government, and so forth, can deliberately be targeted, and effectively harassed and thereby silenced, which effectively is an abridgment of our freedom of speech.

 

To the government, it is a very nice convenience, to have this particular law in their arsenal as it allows them to pressure those that annoy them, to no good end.  For the people, this law is a version of being in constant danger, without really being aware that this is so, until they are the unfortunate one to become indicted for their "crime".  This law is most definitely used, it's very effective for its intended purposes, and it is a very dangerous power poorly written and chillingly oppressive.