Category Archives: Reform the CFAA

Internet Archive, Reform the CFAA, Remembering John Perry Barlow, Transcripts, Video

Anna Barlow at the John Perry Barlow Symposium

 Anna Barlow, at the Internet Archive’s John Perry Barlow Symposium, April 7, 2018

To have access to that truth; to protect the availability that the Internet offered in a way that was more raw and accessible to information than ever before. He knew that this was an imperative thing to fight for, and it was second nature for him to fight as hard as he could. – Anna Barlow.

Video and complete transcription available at the Internet Archive.
(A complete index of all speakers is forming here on the Aaron Swartz Day website.)

Anna Barlow: Welcome everyone. Well I just want to say this is such a wonderful event for my family and I. And on the way over here I was thinking what a great thing it is that my dad doesn’t have to be bummed about missing parties anymore because now he can kind of go to all the parties, and he gets the best seat in the House which is which is great. So he would be so tickled about this amazing collection of some of his truly favorite minds and thinkers of all time in one room talking about the ideas that he was most inspired by. Most of them happen to be good friends but that’s just kind of how he rolled; with people that intrigued him the most. This speech was thrown together in the past few days so bear with me here. But it’s an honor to share some thoughts about him here.

The fact that it’s in conjunction with honoring him and his work – which has always been one of his favorite things – is a real treat for him to say the least. And I feel very much that he’s with us today and this weekend. And it’s I’m sure he’s giddy for this beautiful gathering. So thank you all so much for being here. And to EFf and the Internet Archive archive. My dad was kind of like a roving psychedelic data collector slash cowboy spy. The majority of his life.

And I remember as a little girl him coming home to rural Wyoming from his travels. Being so fascinated by these trinkets and books and artifacts from the far reaches of the world. We got to join him on many of these adventures as well as spend some time with him in his home in New York and San Francisco. But for the most part he seemed to always be in a different country every time I spoke with him, most of my life. And I remember him explaining to me as a little girl it wasn’t so much the things in these places that made them so special to visit, but it was really the people that lit up and fueled his love for exploration. When he got sick in the past few years I realized that although this physical presence was stationary, his adventures didn’t stop they just started coming to him. For the first time in his life, my dad was in the same place multiple months at a time, which meant that the people that loved him from all over the world actually knew where to find him.

So they started to come to visit him. Some regularly from across town. Others flew from across the globe just for a day. But everyone that came. No matter how close they were or how well they knew each other came for the same reasons. Beyond just loving him, they came to feel inspired. To feel understood. They needed to have their brains just completely turned inside out and handed back to them in 15 minutes which was really good at. Or sometimes most dependently they needed to just have a good laugh, which he was sure to supply. Even in his darkest of days whether he was meaning to or not, the man could get a laugh out of an old family dog. In fact he often said “it’s humor that saves us from despair.” And up until the very last day, he was still cracking jokes that ended in uncomfortable laughter, uncontrollable laughter (sometimes uncomfortable haha). [00:59:09]

Over the course of the past few years, I found myself returning time and again to the station here in San Francisco to be with him. To help how I could. But I also came for that inspiration and that wisdom and that laughter. I met some incredible visitors of his, over the past few years. Physicists who taught alongside at Harvard. Brazilian supermodels who are still in love with him from 10 years ago at Carnival. Famous suit makers. His old pal, Joey Scalone, that made his favorite deli sandwich in New York, with extra Miracle Whip, that they had just there for him. Dancers. Writers. Politicians. Magicians. Janitors from old hospitals. Leaders of biker gangs. Healers. Priests and childhood friends. Each with a different special story of what my dad meant to them. Each with a different lens of the strong love they felt for him. I remember each distinctly, as they were unique.

One of my favorite visitors really helped me understand my fathers impact on the world of the Internet in a way that I hadn’t before. And, to this day, was one of my favorite Barlow interactions. One day, as my dad was in the hospital, and I was, for whatever reason, feeling a little short wired and tired. Two men walked in with baggy clothes and neck tattoos, and I thought “where in the world does this puzzle piece fall on the insane mosaic of my dad’s life?” My dad was sleeping and the nurse asked for us to go in the waiting room. At first I didn’t feel very talkative, but from pure curiosity, I asked how they knew my dad. [01:00:52]

“He saved our lives. One of them said completely candidly. The other nodded.

“Oh yeah? How’s that?” I asked.

They went on to explain in such a poignant beautiful way, that my dad to them was a contemporary noble knight that rode on and rode in on his white stallion, and one of the most dire moments in their lives and swept them out of harm’s way and they owed everything to him.

These guys, I came to find out where a couple of the first original “hackers” The original whistleblowers who cracked the code to access databases for the good of humanity who fought for the truth. They had been thrown into jail for accessing information that should be shared for the public’s well-being and they were looking at extensive prison terms and my dad fought day and night to get them out. He didn’t know them well at this point, but he felt it was important to stand up for what they were doing, but more importantly to stand up for the people’s right to know the truth. (Cheers and applause from Audience.) [01:01:50]

To have access to that truth; to protect the availability that the Internet offered in a way that was more raw and accessible to information than ever before. He knew that this was an imperative thing to fight for, and it was second nature for him to fight as hard as he could.

Those men those men now live in Silicon Valley with successful startups and families. I wish I remember their names; they might be here. But it was a great interaction and it resembles such a small drop in the bucket of impacts that my father has had in his pursuit for protecting free speech. The right to access it and the pioneering of the Internet as we know it. So thank you dad for all of those important things of vital importance now more than ever to my generation, as well as to every generation to come.

If there’s one thing that my dad believed in more than anything, it was that everyone and everything is connected. The fabric of our lives is a never ending network is a never ending network of connectivity, and the internet nerd network mirrors that in a way that fascinated him entirely until his very last day. He said recently in reference to the internet. “I mean think of how expansive it is. It’s just an extensive ecosystem. It’s capable of keeping God company.” Followed by one of his whimsical chuckles. We’re so thrilled to celebrate him today and all of his work in pioneering free speech and just all of the impacts that he had to keep us in line with what’s important about honoring knowledge and truth today.

So thank you so much for being here. Big things to the EFF and the Internet Archive and we look forward to the speakers. [01:03:36]

Transcription by Lisa Rein (Co-founder Aaron Swartz Day & Creative Commons, and friend of John Perry Barlow). Lisa Rein used Teme to start – and then cleaned it up by comparing it to the video, over many days :) Corrections are very much appreciated-please send them to: lisa[@]lisarein.com.

Aaron Swartz Day 2017, History, Reform the CFAA, Student Innovator Protections

Setting the Record Straight

Seems like a good time for a reminder. (This content is from our “Setting the Record Straight” page that has been up since October 2014.)

FACT: Aaron implemented a piece of software that downloaded articles from the JSTOR website faster than JSTOR originally intended. Aaron’s software downloaded articles from the JSTOR website to Aaron’s laptop, just like a live person would have downloaded them, but without his having to sit there and click through each of the steps manually.  Source: Alex Stamos, http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

FACT: Aaron did not hack into any of MIT’s computers. The CFAA requires that a person gain access to a computer that they weren’t authorized to access. Aaron was obviously authorized to access his own laptop.

FACT: Aaron did not hack into MIT’s network. Aaron connected his laptop to MIT’s open network by walking into an open computer closet on MITs open campus and simply plugging into an unused ethernet port.  Source: Alex Stamos, http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

FACT: Aaron was a “Fellow” at the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at the time. Aaron was exactly the type of academic researcher that MIT meant to have downloading articles from the JSTOR database over its open network. Aaron’s past research in this regard was the basis of a Stanford Law Review Article where he found troubling connections between corporations and their funding of legal research. Source: Stanford Law Review
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/print/article/punitive-damages-remunerated-research-and-legal-profession

FACT: Aaron wasn’t even violating JSTOR’s Terms of Service at the time. JSTOR and MIT had contractual agreements allowing unlimited downloads to any computers on MITs network.
Source: Alex Stamos, http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

FACT: Downloading JSTOR articles was one minor footnote among the many amazing projects Aaron was working on at the time. From the fall of 2010 until his death in 2013, Aaron’s projects included, but were not limited to: SecureDrop, the leak-protecting technology for journalists now implemented by outlets ranging from The New Yorker to Forbes to The Guardian; the SOPA/PIPA fight, The Flaming Sword of Justice (now The Good Fight), a podcast about activism which went on to reach the top of the iTunes charts; VictoryKit, an online campaigning toolset still mobilizing activists around the world; and co-founding Demand Progress.

 

Aaron Swartz Day 2014, History, Press, Reform the CFAA

Aaron Swartz Was No Criminal; Was Fully “Authorized” to Download JSTOR Articles

Republished from 2014

Aaron Swartz Was No Criminal

By Dan Purcell for BoingBoing.

aaronboingboingFrom the article:

You might ask, like I did, what Aaron’s actions had to do with “computer crimes.” Aaron hadn’t broken into a secure network and stolen credit card numbers. He hadn’t stolen anyone’s healthcare data. He hadn’t violated anyone’s privacy. He hadn’t caused anybody to lose any money. There are things that are “computer crimes” that we all recognize are invasive and dangerous, and this was not one of them.

But Steve Heymann did what bureaucrats and functionaries often choose to do. He wanted make a big case to justify his existence and justify his budget. The casualties be damned.

..He had the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is an over broad federal statute that has been made more broad by federal prosecutors trying to stretch its terms. But under the indictment in Aaron’s case, the government still had to prove that Aaron had gained unauthorized access to a computer system. Our defense was really pretty simple. There were going to be other nuances, and we were going to talk a lot about Aaron’s motivations and the type of person Aaron was, but our bottom line was going to be that Aaron had done only what MIT permitted him to do. He hadn’t gained unauthorized access to anything. He had gained access to JSTOR with full authorization from MIT. Just like anyone in the jury pool, anyone reading Boing Boing, or anyone in the country could have done.

We hoped that the jury would understand that and would acquit Aaron, and it quickly became obvious to us that there really wasn’t going to be opportunity to resolve the case short of trial because Steve Heymann was unreasonable.

Of course, after Aaron’s passing, it’s really easy for them to say “35 years. That was a bluff. It was never gonna happen.” That was not what they were telling us. Heymann always insisted on a sentence of hard time in Federal Prison. We said, “this is really a very trivial thing. Can’t we resolve it with probation or some other thing that made a little more sense and would make it possible for Aaron to go on with his life?”

He said “no.” He insisted that Aaron plead to a felony and serve prison time. And of course, what he said, as prosecutors often do, is that if we go to trial, it won’t be so easy, and if we lose, well, this is a tough judge, and the prosecution is going to recommend a very difficult sentence. Aaron may end up having a term of years.

Aaron Swartz Day 2016, Reform the CFAA

Lauri Love – A Call to Action to Friends in the US

As read at the Aaron Swartz Day Evening Event, on November 5, 2016, at the request of Noah Swartz                    Free Lauri Love Website

By Mustafa Al-Bassam (friend of Lauri)

Lauri Love is a computer scientist from the UK, who was a long-time friend of Aaron Swartz. He is facing extradition to the United States for various CFAA charges, including his alleged involvement in a series of online protests that followed Aaron’s persecution and untimely death. He is being pursued by the US criminal justice system for allegedly protesting abuses of that same system, with prosecutors in three US court districts accusing Mr Love of hacking into various government websites.

In July 2015, Lauri was arrested by UK officials on the request of the US government, who had issued several indictments and corresponding extradition warrants. The FBI and Department of Justice allege that Lauri has been involved in hacking into various governmental agencies, including the US Army, NASA, the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency. Britain’s National Crime Agency had actually arrested Lauri two years before but never found enough evidence to charge him. Now he is facing extradition to face charges in the United States.

Lauri’s case bears very close resemblance to that of Gary McKinnon’s, who fought a 10 year battle against extradition to the US. Gary was accused of hacking into US military and NASA networks. Gary ultimately won after Home Secretary Theresa May blocked the extradition due to concerns over Gary’s mental health as he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and battled with depression and anxiety.

Like Gary, Lauri is also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and suffers from depression and anxiety; he needs to be close to his family and needs health care that he would not be able to access in the US prison system. Human Rights Watch, reporting on the state of US prison conditions, has noted “disturbing delays in providing vital medical help” and “serious concerns about the overall quality of medical help for federal inmates.” I’m sure most of you are aware of the lack of adequate care in the US prison system, and those of you who have been following Chelsea’s case know how her recent suicide attempt resulted in being sentenced to solitary confinement. In the UK a suicidal inmate would instead be offered the help they require, rather than being punished. Lauri’s family has serious concerns about this as he has a long history of suicidal tendencies. If extradited, he would be thrust into a cell an ocean away from the support system that has sustained him.

On September 2016 a British Judge ruled in favor of extradition, passing the case to Secretary of State Amber Rudd. While Lauri can appeal to the High Court, the Secretary of State no longer has power to block the extradition on human rights grounds like in Gary’s case. This means that Rudd will have no choice to approve the extradition.

In light of this, and thanks to campaigning by the Courage Foundation and friends, 114 British Members of Parliament have recently signed a letter to Barack Obama to call on him to stop Lauri’s extradition. Support from the British public and politicians has been immense, but unfortunately there has been little attention bought to this case in the US, which is much needed.

If Lauri were to be extradited, even if he survived his time in prison awaiting trial, it’s likely that a sentence given to him by a US court would destroy his life. While in the UK it’s common for convicted hackers to return to a normal life within a few years, the US justice system could easily sentence Lauri to a nearly life long prison term, or fine him for an amount large enough that he would spend the rest of his life paying it back. His US charges would land him up to 99 years in prison.

I myself was threatened with extradition to the US by the FBI in 2011 due to my involvement in hacktivism. My case ultimately ended up being heard in the UK, and I ended up relatively unscathed having spent no time in jail, compared to my co-defendants in the US, including Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond, who are still in jail to this day. I do not wish for anyone else to become another victim of the disproportionate US justice system, including Lauri.

We call on friends in the US who are concerned about the unjust nature of the CFAA, the overly harsh US sentencing system and the mental health limitations of the US prison system to campaign and raise awareness for Lauri’s case. The US justice system has international consequences, and it would be extremely powerful if American citizens campaign in solidarity on behalf of international citizens in recognition of these harsh laws.

Please spread the word about Lauri’s case. You can find out more at freelauri.com. I hope that some of you will spend your time tonight talking about how to raise awareness for those, like Aaron, who find themselves at risk of being crushed under the US’s overly harsh, outdated, and misused hacking laws.

Aaron Swartz Day 2015, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reform the CFAA, Surveillance Reform, Video

Cindy Cohn at Aaron Swartz Day 2015

See Cindy Cohn at this year’s Evening Event: TICKETS HERE

(Discount code: “hackathoner” for 1/2 price :-)


Download mp4       Hi-res files of entire event
CC0

Note: I’m including a full transcription at the bottom of this post. (Thanks to OpenTranscripts.org for their transcriptions of these talks.)

Quotes from Cindy’s Talk:

The Internet is going to be the means by which we do all the rest of the change that we need to do so badly in this world. And that I think there’s enough people now that we really have a movement, and we need to start thinking of ourselves as a movement, and we have to figure out what our next steps are…

Sitting here and listening to all the presentations tonight, seeing the amazing activity out there, seeing the tentacles of what Aaron was a part of in the early days, and in some ways the heart of, in the early days, become a movement. You guys, you’re a movement and thank you so much for doing this. So let’s figure out what our next fights are together and our work is together…

I think if people who want to honor Aaron Swartz do one thing with regard to Congress and then go back to coding, the one thing you should do is say “That law goes no further. It doesn’t get any worse and it doesn’t take any lives.”…

There is some good news in the state of California. We just passed, and we got Governor Brown to sign, a law called CalECPA, which requires the cops, the California state cops, to get a warrant before they go after your information stored with service providers…

It’s time for the legislature and the FBI to get over it. Crypto is here to stay, and all of the tools that we’ve talked about here tonight depend on the ability for people to have strong unbreakable crypto, and we need to stand up for it again. Watch the EFF web site. We’re going to keep talking about this, and you’ll see some causes…

I think we need to send a strong message to the White House that President Obama needs to come out and take a strong stand on crypto, not just say “we’re not going to come after crypto right now, but we may do something later” but to say, “No. Hell no. Americans deserve to have locks on their doors that don’t have backdoor entries for law enforcement.”…

And while the folks in Washington DC like to just wave their hands and say, “You geeks sort it out. Find a way to have a backdoor that only good guys can go in and bad guys can’t,” those of us who know about technology, and more importantly those of us who know about math, know that this is impossible…

I’m so happy to see so many projects being celebrated here that were created or inspired or legally defended by EFF. We’re going to continue to be the support for this community. One of the things that John Perry Barlow taught me years ago is that your rights aren’t given to you, your rights have to be taken. And we’re here today to continue to take our rights.

*** Complete Transcription Below***

Thanks so much for inviting me. When I took over as Executive Director of the EFF in April [2015], many people asked me, “Well, what do you want to do? How do you want to be different than your predecessor, the amazing Shari Steele” who has her own little statue. She’s the only non-Archive person who has a statue in the Archive, and Brewster did that to honor her and the work that we’ve done together.

What I said was, you know I think that there are enough people who care about the Internet, who understand, as my friend Cory Doctorow said, that whatever other issue draws you, if the Internet isn’t free this is the place. The Internet is going to be the means by which we do all the rest of the change that we need to do so badly in this world. And that I think there’s enough people now that we really have a movement, and we need to start thinking of ourselves as a movement, and we have to figure out what our next steps are.

And I have to say, sitting here and listening to all the presentations tonight, seeing the amazing activity out there, seeing the tentacles of what Aaron was a part of in the early days, and in some ways the heart of, in the early days, become a movement. You guys, you’re a movement and thank you so much for doing this. So let’s figure out what our next fights are together and our work is together. But, this has just been very exciting to see, and to see the growth. And, ya know, we lost our dear friend as a result of some really horrible laws and some really horrible policies, but seeing the green shoots that’ve grown as a result of this just does my heart good.

Lisa wanted me to talk a little about CISA, the cybersecurity act. I think that at this point the best thing that this community can do about CISA is first of all continue to talk about how rotten it is, because it’s a really rotten idea. We have a terrible cybersecurity problem. This is the a cybersecurity act that was recently passed out of the Senate.

We have a terrible problem with security on the Internet, as Brewster pointed out, and Congress just passed a bill that doesn’t make anything better and makes several things significantly worse, in the fine tradition of our Congress.

I don’t know that there’s too much we can do in terms of public activism on the bill right now, realistically, because it’s in a conference committee time, which isn’t the time when there are very many members of Congress who are going to pay attention to it. There’s one thing, though, that we have to keep watching on and that you’ll hear EFF and others rally the troops on, and that is the effort to try to put some horrible changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act into this bill. We expect it’s going to come up again, and when it does you’ll hear the rallying cry. And I think if people who want to honor Aaron Swartz do one thing with regard to Congress and then go back to coding, the one thing you should do is say “That law goes no further. It doesn’t get any worse and it doesn’t take any lives.”

We have a couple other policy opportunities that I thought I’d mention to you guys. We just got a really amazing ruling out of the European Court of Justice in the last couple weeks that really points out what a global problem the NSA’s overreach and the surveillance overreach is. It’s got some complicated stuff having to do with the safe harbors and how American companies get to process information related to people all around the world. But the important part for us is to keep a close eye on what happens next, because the old rules have been crossed out and the American companies and the European regulators and the American government are in an intense negotiation about what happens next.

So we’ve got an inflection point opportunity here and we ought to be talking about this European Court of Justice opinion and what it means, because what the European Court of Justice said is the NSA surveillance is not appropriate. For the legal geeks, this is surveillance under Section 702 of the FISA Act and Executive Order 12333. What that means is the American government’s view that it can spy on the rest of the world with impunity, that it can do mass spying of people around the world who are not suspected of any crimes, who aren’t targets, who aren’t foreign spies, is unacceptable under European law. It’s a really excellent decision. You guys should all thank Max Schrems, who brought that case.

And there’s a moment now, for the next few months, and I think to the extent that you guys are blogging, writing, tweeting, you should be paying attention to this because we’ve the American companies are really scared. They want to be able to continue to serve Europe, and we need to give them a backbone to say “enough with the surveillance. It’s hurting our business.” And if we could have that argument plus “it’s actually just plain wrong.” We might be able to get somewhere. So please, if you’re watching the policy debates, that’s something to watch.

There is some good news in the state of California. We just passed, and we got Governor Brown to sign, a law called CalECPA, which requires the cops, the California state cops, to get a warrant before they go after your information stored with service providers. This is completely consistent with the values— it’s California taking the lead in a place where frankly the U.S. Congress is unwilling to go, and we’re hoping to spread this across the country. So, for people who are not Californians this is a law to look at if you want to do something locally and try to match or even do one better than California did with that. So we’ve got some good news as well.

And of course one of the other things that we’re going to have to keep an eye on in the policy things is the cryptowars are back. Now, I had the honor of being deeply involved in getting crypto free from government regulation when we did it the first time in the 90s and frankly I’d like to do something else now. So it’s time for the legislature and the FBI to get over it. Crypto is here to stay, and all of the tools that we’ve talked about here tonight depend on the ability for people to have strong unbreakable crypto, and we need to stand up for it again. Watch the EFF web site. We’re going to keep talking about this, and you’ll see some causes.

We just got 100,000 people to sign our savecrypto.org petition, which is going to go to the President now, and the President has to respond to it. It’s not too late, though. If people want to still sign it, I think it’s still available to sign. I think we need to send a strong message to the White House that President Obama needs to come out and take a strong stand on crypto, not just say “we’re not going to come after crypto right now, but we may do something later” but to say, “No. Hell no. Americans deserve to have locks on their doors that don’t have backdoor entries for law enforcement.”

And while the folks in Washington DC like to just wave their hands and say, “You geeks sort it out. Find a way to have a backdoor that only good guys can go in and bad guys can’t,” those of us who know about technology, and more importantly those of us who know about math, know that this is impossible. So we need to make sure that that message starts here from the West Coast and makes it all the way to the East Coast. I hear they know about math out there, too, so it shouldn’t be that hard to explain it. But I think we’re going to have to continue to do some explaining.

So that’s just a quick update of what we’re doing at EFF. I’m so happy to see so many projects being celebrated here that were created or inspired or legally defended by EFF. We’re going to continue to be the support for this community. One of the things that John Perry Barlow taught me years ago is that your rights aren’t given to you, your rights have to be taken. And we’re here today to continue to take our rights.

Thanks.

Reform the CFAA, Student Innovator Protections

How Universities Can Lead The Way For Legal Reform and Protection of Student Innovators

This article sets out a straight forward plan for how universities can support student innovation and protect their students from unnecessary prosecution (see very bottom of this post).

Students Who Push Tech Boundaries Should Be Encouraged, Not Punished

By April Glaser for Wired

From the article:

Notably, after faculty members and students circulated an open letter, MIT President Rafael Reif announced plans to support the Tidbit innovators, and MIT sent a formal letter to New Jersey’s Attorney General, asking it to withdraw the subpoena. The open letter stated that the subpoena from the New Jersey Attorney General will have, “a chilling effect on MIT teaching and research.” Soon after, MIT faculty and MIT students wrote additional letters of support, asking New Jersey to withdraw the subpoena. Over 800 members of the MIT community signed onto these letters.

President Reif appears to get it. In response to the outcry over the Tidbit controversy, Reif announced that MIT plans to create a new legal resource for students threatened by legal challenges as a result of their innovative work and entrepreneurial pursuits. “In the case of someone creating an innovative new product and then getting into legal trouble doing something that was a part of their classwork — then, MIT absolutely does have a legal interest to be involved,” Ethan Zuckerman, director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, told the press.

Also from the article:

Now is the time for students and campus communities that want to vitalize innovation to speak up and demand university support. There are some simple steps that universities can take to foster inventiveness in their campus communities:

1. Create a legal intake mechanism or program for students who receive subpoenas and are threatened by computer crime laws. Student innovators need to know where to go to receive help.

2. Publish a guide on CFAA and in-state computer crime laws so that students and researchers can better understand the contours of the laws that may be leveraged against them.

3. Universities should be pushing for computer crime legal reform and come out with strong institutional support for reform efforts on the federal and state level.

Just as laws are frequently outdated by the accelerated pace of technology, campus policies often lag behind in addressing the potential legal needs of their most innovative students exploring the frontiers of digital invention. Yet universities don’t have to move at the slothful pace of legal change.

Reform the CFAA, Takepart.com Articles

References for Takepart.com Article About CFAA Reform

Reference Links for TakePart.com Article on the CFAA:
  “7 Things You Might Be Doing Online That Could Get You Arrested”:

1. The EFF’s Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa

2. Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an Extraordinary Hacker and Activist
By Peter Eckersley
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz

3. Rebooting Computer Crime Law Part 1: No Prison Time For Violating Terms of Service
By Marcia Hoffman and Rainey Reitman
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/rebooting-computer-crime-law-part-1-no-prison-time-for-violating-terms-of-service

4. Aaron Swartz’s Father: My Son Was ‘Killed by the Government’
By Matthew Fleischer for TakePart.com
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/01/16/aaron-swartzs-father-government-killed-my-son

5. The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime” By Alex Stamos
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

6. This Is the MIT Surveillance Video That Undid Aaron Swartz
By Kevin Poulsen for Wired
http://www.wired.com/2013/12/swartz-video/

7. Booking Video: Aaron Swartz Jokes, Jousts With Cops After MIT Bust
By Kevin Poulsen for Wired
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/aaron-swartz-booking-video/

8. Until Today, If You Were 17, It Could Have Been Illegal To Read Seventeen.com Under the CFAA
By Dave Maass and Kurt Opsahl and Trevor Timm
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/until-today-if-you-were-17-it-could-have-been-illegal-read-seventeencom-under-cfaa

9. Today, we save the Internet (again): fix the CFAA!
by Cory Doctorow for BoingBoing
http://boingboing.net/2013/04/08/today-we-save-the-internet-a.html

10. Swartz didn’t face prison until feds took over case, report says
By Declan McCullagh for CNET
http://www.cnet.com/news/swartz-didnt-face-prison-until-feds-took-over-case-report-says/

Reform the CFAA, Takepart.com Articles

7 Things You Might Be Doing Online That Could Get You Arrested

7 Things You Might Be Doing Online That Could Get You Arrested By Lisa Rein for TakePart.com                                                                              June 2, 2014

From the article:

For instance, in Swartz’s case, his “crime” was having a script download the journal articles rather than sitting there and downloading them one at a time himself. Yet it’s not clear that such automation even violates MIT and JSTOR’s terms of service. As computer expert Alex Stamos describes it: “[Aaron] was an intelligent young man who found a loophole that would allow him to download a lot of documents quickly. This loophole was created intentionally by MIT and JSTOR, and was codified contractually” in documents revealed during the discovery phase of the government’s case against Swartz.

This vaguely defined law with strict penalties means that an overly ambitious prosecutor can imprison someone for doing things most Internet users consider routine, allowing law enforcement to go after people for violating a contract, even when the violated party isn’t encouraging prosecution.