Interesting Supreme Court ruling for you in the programming world

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Xarpolis

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Supreme Court: Hacking conviction stands for man who didn’t hack computer

A friend messaged this to me. Here's our conversation.

Him: this is an interesting case
Him: im not sure how i feel about it
Him: basically they played out the plot to office space
Him: 3 people, 2 programmers and a guy with access to files, stole information from their employer in order to make a competing firm
Him: the 2 programmers were charged with stealing information and hacking, and whatever
Him: the third guy argued he shouldn't be sentenced because he didn't touch a computer, he only told others to do it, vs doing it himself
Me: I guess they gave the 3rd person the same charges?
Him: lesser charges, but still a year in prison
Me: Got ya.
Me: I guess that's illegal also now.
Me: You can't coerce people into doing something illegal.
Him: anyways, he said he committed no crime since asking someone to do something isn't illegal on it's own
Him: they let the court order for a guilty verdict stand
Him: all in all, it sounds right
Him: but here's where it gets complicated, bosses tell their subordinates to do illegal things with computers all the time
Him: not out of maliciousness, but because they genuinely don't know any better
Me: Ok.
Him: this is going to potentially open a lot of people up to prosecution in the future
Him: to laws that they don't know about, much less understand
Me: Hmm. Think it'll stand in the long haul, then?
Me: Or will they eventually revisit it and change the ruling? Or is it a matter of the Supreme Court is NEVER wrong?
Him: the supreme court won't hear another case like this for a long time
Him: so probably
Me: hmm...
Him: courts are really slow with technology
 
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Cad

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How is that wrong? The third guy knew what he was doing, so he was an active co-conspirator. He didn't just innocently give them some credentials.

If I carry the gun into the liquor store and hand it to you and tell you to shoot the teller, are you saying I'm guilty of no crime?

Being "relating to a computer" doesn't toss ordinary legal concepts out the window.
 
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Skanda

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Yeah, this seems fine to me. Dude used social engineering to get someone else's credentials and then gave those to his helpers so they could steal the information. Since Intent is written into the law he violated I really doubt every tom, dick and harry are suddenly going to find themselves up on hacking charges for clicking the wrong button.
 

chaos

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The metaphor breaks down because he was never in possession of the gun. It would be like if he walked into a liquor store and told someone to take someone else's gun and then told them to use the gun. He didn't actually do anything other than tell other people to do things.
 

iannis

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It clearly sounds like conspiracy. I don't really know what justification he even thought he had for a complaint.

You hire a guy to kill your wife, you still face charges. Not murder, but conspiracy to commit murder.
 

chaos

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The reason the EFF appealed it is for that reason. He was charged with the act, not "conspiracy to commit" the act. The CFAA is, in general, a pretty shit law that is long overdue for changes. He was clearly guilty of something, just probably not what he was charged with.
 
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iannis

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I would say maybe its a poorly worded law, but

The hacking section at issue here is the one that punishes whoever "knowingly, and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access."

Is actually shockingly clear language for legalese. Defense lawyer was grasping at straws bigly. His complaint is invalid, "knowingly and with the intention to commit fraud" clearly delineates the cases he is talking about from criminal conspiracies.
 

iannis

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Although to be fair, they probably should go ahead and recognize that they are two separate offenses.
 

chaos

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The EFF is doing just about anything they can to get CFAA reworked. The background is, that law was a direct response to the moral panic in the 1980s after War Games came out. No shit. The penalties are draconian, some of the verbiage outdated, and it doesn't apply in many cases. Like, in this case, he didnt touch a computer, and he's being charged under the CFAA. Clearly, he was a part of a criminal conspiracy, he may have enabled the crime to some extent. But they charged him with the wrong thing. This is their argument, anyway. The prosecution's argument seems to be a variation of "lol fgt". And they're not wrong.
 

Cad

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The EFF is doing just about anything they can to get CFAA reworked. The background is, that law was a direct response to the moral panic in the 1980s after War Games came out. No shit. The penalties are draconian, some of the verbiage outdated, and it doesn't apply in many cases. Like, in this case, he didnt touch a computer, and he's being charged under the CFAA. Clearly, he was a part of a criminal conspiracy, he may have enabled the crime to some extent. But they charged him with the wrong thing. This is their argument, anyway. The prosecution's argument seems to be a variation of "lol fgt". And they're not wrong.

Thats really not what the case is about though, at all. Has nothing to do with conspiracy vs. alleging actual act.

Issue: Whether a person who obtains an account holder’s permission to access a computer nevertheless “accesses a computer without authorization” in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when he acts without permission from the computer’s owner.

This was all about the whole "did they even do anything wrong since they did not trick the person into giving credentials" thing - the person willingly gave credentials. So, did they exceed their allowed access?

The "turns everyone into a hacker" clickbait comes from the fact that the use they alleged exceeded the scope of the allowed use was that the "hackers" use violated the computer use policy of the company. So, millions of people who check sports scores, surf porn, etc now are violating the CFAA because they have exceeded the scope of the allowed use and are now "hacking", at least in as much as this guy was.

Literally nothing to do with conspiracy, don't know where you guys get this stuff. He was clearly part of the actual act.
 
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Noodleface

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In the case of your friends argument I'm not really sure where he's going. If you break the law even if you don't know that you're breaking the law, it's still illegal.

To put it in perspective if my boss and I thought murder was legal and he asked me to kill someone and I did, we'd both be charged. I can't just say "well, I really didn't think it was illegal"
 

chaos

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It's just a word to describe what they did, not a legal definition. He told someone "hey, give these other people your credentials" and he was charged under CFAA. It does seem like more than just a stretch. I don't buy their slippery slope argument, sure it may be possible but I doubt that society will break under the impending new CFAA prosecutions.
 
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iannis

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I dunno. You just described a conspiracy to me.

It just sounds like corporate espionage. And the defense of the non participant is, "its not illegal to tell them to do it".

Except it obviously is. It sounds like what you're talking about pertains to the other two guys who actually did the deed. But if what they did was fraud, then telling them to do it is conspiracy to commit fraud.

It seems pretty simple to me. But that regulation does seem to intentionally avoid the word conspiracy and just directly equate both types of offense.

Which is probably practical.
 

chaos

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Similar I guess in that what they were actually charged with doesn't make much sense given what they did.
 

alavaz

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Makes sense to me. They exceeded their authorized access by downloading and using the database for a competing business and having done so would have damaged the company monetarily.

I think people are getting too hung up on who's fingers touched keyboards. I mean if this were a group of Russians and one of them worked for Target and stole a list of CC numbers from the computer and their intention was to split the profit selling them on tor, no one would think twice about the whole group being charged under CFAA if they got caught.
 

Siliconemelons

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I didn't tell the specters to kill everyone at the docks in oasis, I was just running away from them after they agroed me of their own free will and I lev'ed and FD's 500 ft above the docks.