Is the Federal Cyber-Crime Crackdown the Next War on Drugs? Matthew Fleischer - TakePart
go to original April 23, 2013

Aaron Swartz, Internet activist and programmer, poses in Borderland Books in San Francisco. (Noah Berger/Reuters)

When electronic activist and online pioneer Aaron Swartz committed suicide earlier this year, there was an immediate outcry to change the criminal justice code that some feel pushed Swartz to his death: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Prosecutors used the CFAA to threaten Swartz with a 35-year prison sentence for allegedly using Massachusetts Institute of Technology computers to hack into the academic database JSTOR and publish its archives of academic and library journal articles for free public consumption.

Amid the outcry over Swartz, U.S. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren introduced a new bill, Aaron’s Law, designed to curb the excesses of the CFAA. That bill appears to be stalled - it hasn’t been formally presented for a vote. In the meanwhile, the government is moving full-bore forward in pushing similar extreme CFAA cases.

Read the rest at TakePart

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