The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is a well-meaning law that is hopelessly overbroad. It starts from an unobjectionable premise—there ought to be a law that makes it a crime to hack into someone else’s computer without their permission—but it has gone off the rails. The policy prescriptions to …
On November 8, officials in Springfield, Illinois, discovered that cyber hackers had gained remote access to the city’s water utility. As The Washington Post reports, the hackers first stole the password and access codes from a local company that develops Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. SCADA systems are …
The law, increasingly, is becoming a tool used by opponents of American power to harass American officials and, through the courts, limit America’s freedom of action. A case in point is the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Amir Meshal (an American citizen). Meshal, who …
You have to love this story. Apparently, WikiLeaks is plagued by … you guessed it, leaks! Confronted with the fact that some of its volunteers and employees are talking to outsiders about WikiLeaks and about some of the materials it has collected but hasn’t yet published, WikiLeaks is now demanding …
The report today from the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission is chilling but not terribly surprising. According to the commission (pages 243–44): For about 18 minutes on April 8, 2010, China Telecom advertised erroneous network traffic routes that instructed U.S. and other foreign Internet traffic to travel through Chinese …
