He is a red-headed hacker who hails from Arkansas, goes by the name “weev,” and seems to delight in being annoying. For years, he broke into computer systems, disrupted blog sites and riled people with personal attacks. Now his case has become a flashpoint in the debate over where to draw the line between online freedom and cybercrime in the U.S., and whether the law is too broad or too narrow in both criminal and civil cases. Born Andrew Auernheimer, he is appealing his prison term of three years and five months for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the main U.S. anti-hacking law. Auernheimer, 27, rants from prison that jurors wrongly convicted him of conspiring to take 114,000 e-mail addresses from AT&T Inc. (T)’s website. At trial, the Justice Department said he broke the law on unauthorized access of protected computer systems. His lawyers want an appeals court to interpret the law more narrowly, arguing that AT&T’s site was virtually wide open and left unsecured by the company’s design. “This is really about freedom to use the Web,” said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor who is helping on Auernheimer’s appeal. “The future impact is enormous because, effectively, if this is a crime, then visiting a website is a crime when the website owner doesn’t want you to visit in that way.” Auernheimer’s conviction and 41-month sentence have emboldened those who say the CFAA can be interpreted much too broadly by prosecutors and judges. Some Internet law experts and civil liberties groups seek legislation to narrow its scope, contending that without reform it could be used to turn innocent Internet users into criminals. Hurts Research From prison, where he has been held at times in solitary confinement, Auernheimer continues to argue that he is the victim of a Draconian law that threatens research and ordinary Internet usage. He sent a Twitter message that the law “doesn’t hinder Romanians, Estonians, Chinese” hackers…“It only hurts researchers and activists.” His case highlights one of the knottiest issues in the digital economy: How can the law help ensure freedom of movement and information in cyberspace, while protecting billions of records and devices, as well as intellectual property, from theft and intrusion? Those conflicts are playing out in criminal cases like Auernheimer’s, as well as in civil lawsuits, including one filed by Craigslist, which is suing startup companies that used data on its public website to build applications. Adding to the urgency of the debate is a backdrop of unrelenting assaults against business and government computer systems around the world, accusations by U.S. officials that Chinese hackers have pilfered vast amounts of intellectual property and classified materials, and turmoil over disclosures about the U.S. government’s digital spying on its own citizens. No Misuse Bradford Newman, an attorney who represents corporations in preventing data theft, defended the law, saying prosecutors are using it appropriately. “The CFAA serves an important role in our society now more than ever, when computers are a daily part of everything we do,” said Newman, a lawyer with Paul Hastings LLP. The Justice Department has been criticized at times for the cases it has chosen to prosecute under the CFAA, passed in 1984. The department came under fire, for example, after the January suicide of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist facing prosecution for breaking into the computer system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. businessweek/news/2013-06-17/at-and-t-hacker-weev-tests-limits-of-u-dot-s-dot-crime-law-on-website-use
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:09:21 +0000
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