But while they can edit the URL, most people don't. For that reason, prosecutors insists that it's illegal. On page 32, they describe a hypothetical "judicial law clerk" who is a "reasonably sophisticated computer user". They point out that this clerk would search in vain for hyperlinks, and thus, not be able to access the information since such hyperlinks don't exist.
This is a clever trick of the prosecutors. It exploits the fact that the way the judge is going to handle this case is to give the brief to the young clerk who spends a lot of time on Facebook, where "heavy Facebook use" is the proxy for "reasonably sophisticated computer user".
HN user Rayiner is a law clerk in a US appeals court, and he's pretty handy with assembler from wha tI recall. This is a ridiculous straw man argument what badly misrepresents the claims in the brief.
Overall, I think this article is terribly poorly written. An inability to handle basic grammar is not a good foundation for parsing legal arguments, and much of the author's argument is predicated on the assumption that lawyers and judges do not understand computers.
I'm still kind of boggled that they were unable to get Weev on criminal harassment. Or anything else, for that matter, given that IIRC he had no employment of record but was independently wealthy and bragged about doing computer crime for cash. He absolutely belongs in prison; just not, perhaps, for this specific charge.
I love how it's illegal to adjust part of URL but perfectly legal to wiretap, decrypt personal communications and spy on billions of people.
they returned the http code 200. that means good to go. there is another code for access forbidden.
The government would normally file an application for leave to file a brief in excess of the appellate rules' word limit. U.S. federal courts normally grant these applications when made by the government. When made by defendants in criminal cases, it's much more of a maybe. However, courts as a rule do not like verbose briefs.
On another note, it seems to me that in these computer cases the law really doesn't care what's "under the hood." It doesn't matter if it's javascript or java, or if maybe someone could have jumped on an open Wi-Fi network.
The law lives in a conservative analogue world and will continue to do so for years to come.
If you read the irc logs, weev and spitler's intent was obviously malicious. I think many things in this case are true at the same time. Oversentencing and prosecution yes, but how do you then prosecute someone like this? There was a reason they included the irc logs in the prosecution, because the intent counts, not just the physical actions by the accused.
I'm wondering why he even appealed this. Seemed pretty straight forward what he did. What exactly is he appealing on? He was only sentenced to 3 years. He'd be out in less than 2 if he stays out of trouble. For a hacker, I'd say he got off pretty light considering what others have gotten.
Since when are you not allowed to type whatever web address you please in your own browser?
Or the user agent? What if you're just curious if the app will even serve another browser?
God says... vessel uman finite unsettled secret abandonedly deep-seated
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God says...
Virtual-Notary.Org hereby notes that on Date: Saturday September 21, 2013 18:31.28 EDT (UTC-0400)
a random drawing in the range [1, 100000], inclusive, based on a hardware source of true randomness, yielded the following decision.
Random Value: 19343
3:12 Now therefore take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man.
3:13 And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the LORD of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap.
3:14 And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people; 3:15 And as they that bare the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest,) 3:16 That the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho.
One of our many lawyers can relate to us how meaningful the complaint about the word count in the prosecution's brief is. Maybe it's a big deal; I have absolutely no clue about that point.
But the central argument to me in this piece is that the DOJ is simply criminalizing URL editing. That is to me a gross oversimplification of what's happened. The CFAA is constructed not to criminalize accidental or reckless unauthorized access, but instead using a "knowing" standard. The DOJ's argument in the Aurenheimer case is that the defendant was aware that he shouldn't have had access to information tied to ICC-IDs, just as he'd have been aware had he tried to loop through Social Security Numbers in some other application.
There are plenty of sane arguments (see Orin Kerr†for a good survey) that what Aurenheimer did shouldn't have constituted unauthorized access. I don't actually happen to agree with any of the ones I've heard, but, more importantly, I have a hard time believing that those arguments are so dispositive that they indicate malfeasance on the part of prosecutors.
To me, the central problem with the CFAA isn't that it's easy to trip. Rather, it's that the sentencing is totally out of whack, in two ways: (1) that CFAA reacts in a particularly noxious catalytic way with other criminal statutes to accelerate minor infractions into significant felonies, and (2) that sentences scale with "damages", which have the effect of creating sentences that scale with the number of iterations in a for(;;) loop, which is nonsensical.
The problem is not simply that once prosecuted, defendants face unjust sentences. It's worse: the oversentencing creates a perverse incentive for prosecutors, turning run-of-the-mill incidents into high-profile vanity cases that lock the DOJ into pointlessly aggressive prosecutions.
To me, it makes sense that what Aurenheimer did should have been illegal, but it makes no sense at all that he's serving a custodial sentence over it.
(I did read the whole article; I didn't find the user-agent and responsible disclosure points particularly compelling, but maybe you did; I'm happy to opine about them as well. It's my judgement, not the article's overt wording, that the argument revolves around URL editing.)
†http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/28/more-thoughts-on-the-six-cf...