Rather Than Fix The CFAA, House Judiciary Committee Planning To Make It Worse… Way Worse | Techdirt.

This is wretched and wrong. The TL;DR here is that there is a law already on the books called the Computer Fraud And Abuse Act and this bill is seeking to amend the law on the books and take it in very wrong and upsetting new directions. One of the biggest things that I spotted on that really has me upset is the redefinition of talking about an offense as equal to actually completing that offense. If you say you are going to do something that breaks this law, save your bus fare, you’re already guilty of committing the crime! The other part is even more insidious and that is even if you are given authorization to access a machine, if you use it for a different purpose, then the authorization is void and you are committing a crime.

This makes my work more complicated. Now I have to be careful about what I say, as this bill, if passed would curtail my first amendment rights to free speech and then that second bit would legally prevent me from noticing anything else wrong with a computer if I was just fixing something adjacent or unrelated to the original problem.

What a mess. Encourage your congress-critter to vote no on this bill!