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“Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames – yes, the one with Matthew Broderick – and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his

by no-s 5y ago

“Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames – yes, the one with Matthew Broderick – and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his desk. They obliged, he signed it, and CFAA became law in 1986.” You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interests had nothing to do with it?

duxup 5y ago
Is that the case? Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? I don't think that's the case, tons of people are violating various policies all the time and they're not being prosecuted. SCOTUS was right in narrowing the focus, but I'm not sure the CCFA really was some corporate conspiracy, if it was ... they didn't make much use of it outside of some terrible, but still isolated incidents. Even things like the abuse of arbitration agreements I think more likely stem from creative lawyers using existing laws to their advantage, not as much direct legislating as is often claimed.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  As a general rule, I think it's unwise to attribute to conspiracy that which can be sufficiently explained by incentive structures and existing rule frameworks. It's nice to pretend someone's in charge of all the bad things that happen, but as They Might Be Giants reminds us, most of the world is described by individual actors doing what they can get away with in individual circumstances.
  - wwweston 5y ago
    > as They Might Be Giants reminds us Remind me where they remind us? This is the crucial content I'm here for.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      TMBG's "The Shadow Government" tells the story of a man going through life extremely paranoid that powerful forces are conspiring personally against him. In the end, he is (likely) murdered and disappeared by the mayor of his small town for challenging the mayor's right to steal his property, because in reality there is no higher power checking his local government's authority. It's the lack of any massive conspiracy controlling events that kills him.
- no-s 5y ago
  or maybe it was written for the benefit of Congressional virtue signaling. The utility of bolstering the reputation of Federal Prosecutors via selective prosecution is just an emergent property?
  - duxup 5y ago
    I don't know what anyone means by virtue signaling these days beyond 'i don't like it'. CCFA beyond the situation described to me still serves a purpose / can be used responsibly.
    - no-s 5y ago
      The term “Virtue Signaling” observes the practice of concealing one's true feelings or ignorance in order to publicly communicate an acceptable moral perspective, thus demonstrating good character to some audience. It is a scornful pejorative to label someone’s actions as “Virtue Signaling”, as it implies they may be disingenuous, deceitful, duplicitous, etc. Thus very popular with elected officials seeking a positive reputation among the electorate or seeking campaign funding.
      - duxup 5y ago
        Still seems like a long way to get to 'i don't like it'. I have trouble believing anyone pushing the CCFA somehow cared enough to be disingenuous about it... to me that require more than a randomly applied label.
- prepend 5y ago
  > Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? The article has Aaron Swartz in the title, so yes. MIT and JSTOR lobbied the feds to pursue Swartz and there are many more examples.
  - CrazedGeek 5y ago
    “Mass” is kind of an important word there. Swartz and the “many more examples” are still essentially rare and isolated incidents.
    - Brian_K_White 5y ago
      The mass is the fact that every single person is subject to being abused, any time anyone else wants to. They can't do it to everyone because of simple logistics, but they can do it to anyone. If you didn't get thrown in prison today, it's not because the problem doesn't apply to you and you are safe. It's only because no one decided it would be super convenient for them if you went away.
    - prepend 5y ago
      Under that definition, there’s no mass prosecutions under any law, right. There aren’t a great number of prosecutions for federal laws. I can’t find any specific statistics for charges brought under CFAA. I think the issue isn’t the total number but the potential total number. So if there’s mass violation and law enforcement picks and chooses who to prosecute that’s a problem. Although obviously it’s less a problem if they do that 1,000 times a year vs 1,000,000.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > MIT and JSTOR lobbied the feds to pursue Swartz No, they didn't. Once Swartz turned over all the data he had collected and promised not to do it again, both MIT and JSTOR said they were satisfied and told the feds they did not want any further action taken. The feds chose to pursue Swartz anyway.
    - prepend 5y ago
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  > Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? This is a case where a small number of people had a very profitable racket going, selling access to publicly funded scientific papers, and Swartz posed a threat to their racket.
  - duxup 5y ago
    My point being I think it is unlikely the law was created so long ago ... to account for that.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      This is more of an explanation of why the law was misused in this particular case. Swartz posed a threat to the ability to privately profit off of publicly funded science.
      - duxup 5y ago
        I can understand that but I was responding to someone who claimed "You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interests".
        GeekyBear 5y ago
        Isn't protecting the interests of a wealthy few exactly what happened in this case? Look at all the recent Federal activity aimed at shutting down Sci-Hub. >A reminder that Elsevier made $6 BILLION selling your academic journals and articles behind paywalls, and made more profit than Amazon, Google and Apple every year for YEARS... And paid the academics who wrote the articles $0 And paid the reviewers of the articles $0 https://twitter.com/DrJessTaylor/status/1390798132632596488?s=20 https://twitter.com/DrJessTaylor/status/1390798132632596488?...
        no-s 5y ago
        “I can understand that but I was responding to someone who claimed ''You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interest.''” You left off the "had nothing to do with it?” part, which was a rhetorical assertion of equivalent hyperbole, but not a direct claim. If you want to interpret it that way you should to include the question mark in the consideration of your response....
wyager 5y ago
Congress bans things based on pop culture fiction movies all the time. They banned switchblade knives in 1958 because of gangster movies. Half the federal firearm regulations (such as the Undetectable Firearms Act) seem to be motivated by learning about guns from action movies.
- nerpderp82 5y ago
  Agreed, I an I think there is a dangerous precedent here for "selling" fear via movies. Entertainment as mass propaganda to enable the passing of unjust laws.
cromulent 5y ago
I'm all about moving "lobbyocracies" back to democracies, but in this case it does seem to check out. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-cybersecuritys-debt-to-a-hollywood-hack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-cyber...
GeekyBear 5y ago
We certainly wouldn't want to blame the Obama DOJ for persecuting, I mean prosecuting, him.
- Justsignedup 5y ago
  Plenty of blame going around. This has been ongoing since Nixon, and has accelerated during Bush, and has continued during Obama. I would not be surprised if the recent upticks are directly correlated with privatized prisons.
  - no-s 5y ago
    I would not be surprised if the recent upticks are directly correlated with privatized prisons. There’s a corporate interest right there! Having some experience from within (healthcare industry, original DRG implementations and TEFRA), I can say that not everything you can get Congress to implement (at the behest of lobbyists) works out beneficially for your particular corporate or industry interest.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
His personal grudge against Reagan detracts from the overall article. I mean, this law being "one of Ronald Reagan's many idiocies?" Like no one else involved in drafting and passing the law was an idiot? Or that, say, Clinton didn't pass several idiotic laws that have proven disastrous in retrospect? It's troubling to me that Congress always has single-digit approval numbers, and yet people who ought to know better continue to lay blame everywhere EXCEPT Congress.
cryptonector 5y ago
Yeah, I'd like to see some documentation of that claim. Congress wrote the CFAA. The President probably had nothing to do with writing the CFAA -- he only signed it. We can't blame Presidents for all that they sign, especially when the convention is to veto very very few bills ever.

by no-s 5y ago

duxup 5y ago

Is that the case? Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? I don't think that's the case, tons of people are violating various policies all the time and they're not being prosecuted. SCOTUS was right in narrowing the focus, but I'm not sure the CCFA really was some corporate conspiracy, if it was ... they didn't make much use of it outside of some terrible, but still isolated incidents. Even things like the abuse of arbitration agreements I think more likely stem from creative lawyers using existing laws to their advantage, not as much direct legislating as is often claimed.

shadowgovt 5y ago
As a general rule, I think it's unwise to attribute to conspiracy that which can be sufficiently explained by incentive structures and existing rule frameworks. It's nice to pretend someone's in charge of all the bad things that happen, but as They Might Be Giants reminds us, most of the world is described by individual actors doing what they can get away with in individual circumstances.
- wwweston 5y ago
  > as They Might Be Giants reminds us Remind me where they remind us? This is the crucial content I'm here for.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    TMBG's "The Shadow Government" tells the story of a man going through life extremely paranoid that powerful forces are conspiring personally against him. In the end, he is (likely) murdered and disappeared by the mayor of his small town for challenging the mayor's right to steal his property, because in reality there is no higher power checking his local government's authority. It's the lack of any massive conspiracy controlling events that kills him.
no-s 5y ago
or maybe it was written for the benefit of Congressional virtue signaling. The utility of bolstering the reputation of Federal Prosecutors via selective prosecution is just an emergent property?
- duxup 5y ago
  I don't know what anyone means by virtue signaling these days beyond 'i don't like it'. CCFA beyond the situation described to me still serves a purpose / can be used responsibly.
  - no-s 5y ago
    The term “Virtue Signaling” observes the practice of concealing one's true feelings or ignorance in order to publicly communicate an acceptable moral perspective, thus demonstrating good character to some audience. It is a scornful pejorative to label someone’s actions as “Virtue Signaling”, as it implies they may be disingenuous, deceitful, duplicitous, etc. Thus very popular with elected officials seeking a positive reputation among the electorate or seeking campaign funding.
    - duxup 5y ago
      Still seems like a long way to get to 'i don't like it'. I have trouble believing anyone pushing the CCFA somehow cared enough to be disingenuous about it... to me that require more than a randomly applied label.
prepend 5y ago
> Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? The article has Aaron Swartz in the title, so yes. MIT and JSTOR lobbied the feds to pursue Swartz and there are many more examples.
- CrazedGeek 5y ago
  “Mass” is kind of an important word there. Swartz and the “many more examples” are still essentially rare and isolated incidents.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    The mass is the fact that every single person is subject to being abused, any time anyone else wants to. They can't do it to everyone because of simple logistics, but they can do it to anyone. If you didn't get thrown in prison today, it's not because the problem doesn't apply to you and you are safe. It's only because no one decided it would be super convenient for them if you went away.
  - prepend 5y ago
    Under that definition, there’s no mass prosecutions under any law, right. There aren’t a great number of prosecutions for federal laws. I can’t find any specific statistics for charges brought under CFAA. I think the issue isn’t the total number but the potential total number. So if there’s mass violation and law enforcement picks and chooses who to prosecute that’s a problem. Although obviously it’s less a problem if they do that 1,000 times a year vs 1,000,000.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > MIT and JSTOR lobbied the feds to pursue Swartz No, they didn't. Once Swartz turned over all the data he had collected and promised not to do it again, both MIT and JSTOR said they were satisfied and told the feds they did not want any further action taken. The feds chose to pursue Swartz anyway.
  - prepend 5y ago
GeekyBear 5y ago
> Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? This is a case where a small number of people had a very profitable racket going, selling access to publicly funded scientific papers, and Swartz posed a threat to their racket.
- duxup 5y ago
  My point being I think it is unlikely the law was created so long ago ... to account for that.
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    This is more of an explanation of why the law was misused in this particular case. Swartz posed a threat to the ability to privately profit off of publicly funded science.
    - duxup 5y ago
      I can understand that but I was responding to someone who claimed "You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interests".
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        Isn't protecting the interests of a wealthy few exactly what happened in this case? Look at all the recent Federal activity aimed at shutting down Sci-Hub. >A reminder that Elsevier made $6 BILLION selling your academic journals and articles behind paywalls, and made more profit than Amazon, Google and Apple every year for YEARS... And paid the academics who wrote the articles $0 And paid the reviewers of the articles $0 https://twitter.com/DrJessTaylor/status/1390798132632596488?s=20 https://twitter.com/DrJessTaylor/status/1390798132632596488?...
      - no-s 5y ago
        “I can understand that but I was responding to someone who claimed ''You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interest.''” You left off the "had nothing to do with it?” part, which was a rhetorical assertion of equivalent hyperbole, but not a direct claim. If you want to interpret it that way you should to include the question mark in the consideration of your response....

wyager 5y ago

Congress bans things based on pop culture fiction movies all the time. They banned switchblade knives in 1958 because of gangster movies. Half the federal firearm regulations (such as the Undetectable Firearms Act) seem to be motivated by learning about guns from action movies.

nerpderp82 5y ago
Agreed, I an I think there is a dangerous precedent here for "selling" fear via movies. Entertainment as mass propaganda to enable the passing of unjust laws.

cromulent 5y ago

I'm all about moving "lobbyocracies" back to democracies, but in this case it does seem to check out. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-cybersecuritys-debt-to-a-hollywood-hack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-cyber...

GeekyBear 5y ago

We certainly wouldn't want to blame the Obama DOJ for persecuting, I mean prosecuting, him.

Justsignedup 5y ago
Plenty of blame going around. This has been ongoing since Nixon, and has accelerated during Bush, and has continued during Obama. I would not be surprised if the recent upticks are directly correlated with privatized prisons.
- no-s 5y ago
  I would not be surprised if the recent upticks are directly correlated with privatized prisons. There’s a corporate interest right there! Having some experience from within (healthcare industry, original DRG implementations and TEFRA), I can say that not everything you can get Congress to implement (at the behest of lobbyists) works out beneficially for your particular corporate or industry interest.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

His personal grudge against Reagan detracts from the overall article. I mean, this law being "one of Ronald Reagan's many idiocies?" Like no one else involved in drafting and passing the law was an idiot? Or that, say, Clinton didn't pass several idiotic laws that have proven disastrous in retrospect? It's troubling to me that Congress always has single-digit approval numbers, and yet people who ought to know better continue to lay blame everywhere EXCEPT Congress.

cryptonector 5y ago

Yeah, I'd like to see some documentation of that claim. Congress wrote the CFAA. The President probably had nothing to do with writing the CFAA -- he only signed it. We can't blame Presidents for all that they sign, especially when the convention is to veto very very few bills ever.