4 ms·

"This opinion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works." Your opinion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the law wor

"This opinion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works." Your opinion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the law works. Under the CFAA, to "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization" is a federal crime under most circumstances. If you don't have a written authorization from Facebook before you send your first HTTP request, you're already a criminal. Of course, the prosecutors interpret that to mean, at various times, exactly whatever they feel it should mean. You can't tell in advance what that will be. But the judges and the jurors will pretty much follow whatever they say because they don't understand what happened. In that case, it's natural for them to just go along with whatever the FBI's paid 'experts' tell them. That's how we keep law and order in a free country.

balabaster 10y ago
He didn't access a computer, he requested information from the computer, over a public channel, which was given. This is a semantic difference so it doesn't matter that the CFAA that they consider the crime "intentionally accessing a computer without authorization" - he didn't remote desktop to the machine and log in and access the file system and get information. He used the OAuth protocol which is afforded over public channels exactly as prescribed to say "This user has granted me access to this information, please give it to me" and Facebook has said "here you go"... This is akin to asking for the information, being issued a cease and desist to prevent you from asking for it again and then using the Freedom of Information Act to request information and subsequently being arrested for being in possession of that information on the grounds that you illegally obtained that information by breaking and entering and accessing files you weren't authorized to access... which you can see is clearly not true.

balabaster 10y ago

He didn't access a computer, he requested information from the computer, over a public channel, which was given. This is a semantic difference so it doesn't matter that the CFAA that they consider the crime "intentionally accessing a computer without authorization" - he didn't remote desktop to the machine and log in and access the file system and get information. He used the OAuth protocol which is afforded over public channels exactly as prescribed to say "This user has granted me access to this information, please give it to me" and Facebook has said "here you go"... This is akin to asking for the information, being issued a cease and desist to prevent you from asking for it again and then using the Freedom of Information Act to request information and subsequently being arrested for being in possession of that information on the grounds that you illegally obtained that information by breaking and entering and accessing files you weren't authorized to access... which you can see is clearly not true.