It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

1/

Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

2/
In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

3/
This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

4/
Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

5/
They wanted to define hacking as "exceeding your authorization" on a computer that didn't belong to you. Even in the mid-1980s, legal and technical scholars recognized the potential dangers of a definition this broad, but not Ronald Reagan.

6/
Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames - yes, the one with Matthew Broderick - and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his desk. They obliged, he signed it, and CFAA became law in 1986.

7/
In the decades since, CFAA has become a major source of cybersecurity mischief. Security researchers who audit systems and warn their users about defects in them are silenced with CFAA threats, giving companies a veto over who can criticize them and how.

8/
Monopolistic online businesses threaten their competitors with CFAA liability. Companies like Facebook have managed to prevail in court, interpreting CFAA the same way Aaron's prosecutors did, making terms-of-service violations into violations of the law.

9/
But cracks have appeared in this dangerous interpretation of CFAA. The @ACLU and a group of journalists have been litigating to overturn portions of the law since 2016:

https://t.co/JPut5Fgv7A

10/
And in 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals produced a remarkably good ruling on CFAA in Hiq v Linkedin, splitting with its own (terrible) precedents in Power Ventures and Nosal II.

https://t.co/EKPpbIrqeT

11/
But the main event for CFAA-fighters has been at the Supreme Court this year, where the Van Buren case promised to make or break the worst elements of the CFAA for good.

12/
The truism "hard cases make bad law" was especially true in Van Buren. Nathan Van Buren was a crooked Georgia cop who took a bribe to look up a sex-worker's personal information in the state law-enforcement database in a FBI sting.

13/
Van Buren thought he was helping a criminal determine whether the sex-worker was an undercover cop.

Van Buren is a bad man and a bad cop.

But he isn't a hacker.

14/
Nevertheless, prosecutors charged him under the CFAA, saying that while he was allowed to access the database, doing so for an improper purpose was a hacking crime, because he "exceeded his authorization."

15/
This may sound sensible - or just expedient - to you. But if the prosecutors were right - if accessing a computer you were authorized to use, but in an unauthorized way - is a felony, then almost everyone is a felon.

16/
The DoJ's theory of the CFAA would make most terms-of-service violations into potential jailable offenses (think "sharing Netflix passwords"). If federal prosecutors gain the power to threaten prison for anyone - everyone - this won't be used to rid the world of dirty cops.

17/
Rather, it will be used against people who already bear the brunt of prosecutorial overreach, creating leverage over the victims of dirty cops.

Thankfully, the Supremes agreed. Yesterday, they handed down a good - if not great - ruling in Van Buren.

18/
The best analysis - as ever - comes from my @EFF colleagues @kurtopsahl and @aaron_d_mackey.

https://t.co/uOf9altGpw

19/
As they point out, the heart of the ruling is a ban on breaking into computer systems - not criminalizing entering the wrong command into a computer you're allowed to use.

20/
This correct interpretation (far narrower than the DoJ's) safeguards security researchers, competitors, and other researchers doing things like gathering data from a housing site to investigate racial bias in rental ads.

21/
As the court pointed out, the DoJ's interpretation was so broad that it could criminalize "embellishing an online-dating profile to using a pseudonym on Facebook."

22/
The ruling was good, but not perfect. A single footnote explains that the court isn't ruling on whether the CFAA only applies when someone bypasses a technical measure, which leaves the door open to turning policy and contract violations into crimes.

23/
SCOTUS got it (mostly) right here. They vindicated Aaron Swartz and all the other victims who were bullied, silenced and terrorized by the CFAA. They took a huge step towards undoing one of Ronald Reagan's many idiocies.

24/
Van Buren should be punished for corruption - under anti-corruption law, not under a definition of hacking so broad that it captures normal activities we all engage in several times, every day.

Image:
Sage Ross
https://t.co/v5DNkF72C4

CC BY-SA:
https://t.co/guhq1dyHz1

eof/
ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://t.co/aXvTZ5o9d6

More from Cory Doctorow

More from All

#தினம்_ஒரு_திருவாசகம்
தொல்லை இரும்பிறவிச் சூழும் தளை நீக்கி
அல்லல் அறுத்து ஆனந்தம் ஆக்கியதே – எல்லை
மருவா நெறியளிக்கும் வாதவூர் எங்கோன்
திருவாசகம் என்னும் தேன்

பொருள்:
1.எப்போது ஆரம்பித்தது என அறியப்படமுடியாத தொலை காலமாக (தொல்லை)

2. இருந்து வரும் (இரும்)


3.பிறவிப் பயணத்திலே ஆழ்த்துகின்ற (பிறவி சூழும்)

4.அறியாமையாகிய இடரை (தளை)

5.அகற்றி (நீக்கி),

6.அதன் விளைவால் சுகதுக்கமெனும் துயரங்கள் விலக (அல்லல் அறுத்து),

7.முழுநிறைவாய்த் தன்னுளே இறைவனை உணர்த்துவதே (ஆனந்த மாக்கியதே),

8.பிறந்து இறக்கும் காலவெளிகளில் (எல்லை)

9.பிணைக்காமல் (மருவா)

10.காக்கும் மெய்யறிவினைத் தருகின்ற (நெறியளிக்கும்),

11.என் தலைவனான மாணிக்க வாசகரின் (வாதவூரெங்கோன்)

12.திருவாசகம் எனும் தேன் (திருவா சகமென்னுந் தேன்)

முதல்வரி: பிறவி என்பது முன்வினை விதையால் முளைப்பதோர் பெருமரம். அந்த ‘முன்வினை’ எங்கு ஆரம்பித்தது எனச் சொல்ல இயலாது. ஆனால் ‘அறியாமை’ ஒன்றே ஆசைக்கும்,, அச்சத்துக்கும் காரணம் என்பதால், அவையே வினைகளை விளைவிப்பன என்பதால், தொடர்ந்து வரும் பிறவிகளுக்கு, ‘அறியாமையே’ காரணம்

அறியாமைக்கு ஆரம்பம் கிடையாது. நமக்கு ஒரு பொருளைப் பற்றிய அறிவு எப்போதிருந்து இல்லை? அதைச் சொல்ல முடியாது. அதனாலேதான் முதலடியில், ஆரம்பமில்லாத அஞ்ஞானத்தை பிறவிகளுக்குக் காரணமாகச் சொல்லியது. ஆனால் அறியாமை, அறிவின் எழுச்சியால், அப்போதே முடிந்து விடும்.
APIs in general are so powerful.

Best 5 public APIs you can use to build your next project:

1. Number Verification API

A RESTful JSON API for national and international phone number validation.

🔗
https://t.co/fzBmCMFdIj


2. OpenAI API

ChatGPT is an outstanding tool. Build your own API applications with OpenAI API.

🔗 https://t.co/TVnTciMpML


3. Currency Data API

Currency Data API provides a simple REST API with real-time and historical exchange rates for 168 world currencies

🔗 https://t.co/TRj35IUUec


4. Weather API

Real-Time & historical world weather data API.

Retrieve instant, accurate weather information for
any location in the world in lightweight JSON format.

🔗 https://t.co/DCY8kXqVIK

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1

From today, we will memorize the names of 27 Nakshatras in Vedic Jyotish to never forget in life.

I will write 4 names. Repeat them in SAME sequence twice in morning, noon, evening. Each day, revise new names + recall all previously learnt names.

Pls RT if you are in.

2

Today's Nakshatras are:-

1. Ashwini - अश्विनी

2. Bharani - भरणी

3. Krittika - कृत्तिका

4. Rohini - रोहिणी

Ashwini - अश्विनी is the FIRST Nakshatra.

Repeat these names TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon and evening. Like this tweet if you have revised 8 times as told.

3

Today's Nakshatras are:-

5. Mrigashira - मृगशिरा

6. Ardra - आर्द्रा

7. Punarvasu - पुनर्वसु

8. Pushya - पुष्य

First recall previously learnt Nakshatras twice. Then recite these TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon & evening in SAME order. Like this tweet only after doing so.

4

Today's Nakshatras are:-

9. Ashlesha - अश्लेषा

10. Magha - मघा

11. Purvaphalguni - पूर्वाफाल्गुनी

12. Uttaraphalguni - उत्तराफाल्गुनी

Purva means that comes before (P se Purva, P se pehele), and Uttara comes later.

Read next tweet too.

5

Purva, Uttara prefixes come in other Nakshatras too. Purva= pehele wala. Remember.

First recall previously learnt 8 Nakshatras twice. Then recite those in Tweet #4 TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon & evening in SAME order. Like this tweet if you have read Tweets #4 & 5, both.