My opinion here is going to be unpopular, and honestly, I don't care for the way the legal (and political) system has handled any of these issues either. I also haven't thought enough about the Supreme Court decision to decide what I think about it.

But I think this particular article is garbage.

To begin, here's a small point that many engineering types fail to internalize: the legal system is built to deal with intentions. A piece of code or a device doesn't care what your intentions were when you built it, or what the user's intentions are when they use it. It just does what it does. On the contrary, intentions matter in the legal system. Hitting someone with your car is not automatically murder. It may not even be a crime. And stealing bread if you are starving is almost universally recognized as not a crime.

"Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime."

I'm a bit ambivalent about this part of Swartz's case, but it is certainly not mustache-twirling evil on the part of the prosecutors. I'm sure Doctrow, like the prosecutors, isn't going to dispute some of the facts in the case: Swartz intended to make those articles free. He was going to take those articles from the system that allowed him to access them and re-publish them in violation of their owner's wishes. Now, I don't like the information property system we have any more than anyone else, but it is the system we have and we get to live with it until we can change it. Swartz was not using a script to download the articles so he could read them later, he was using a script to make copies so he could redistribute them.

And the prosecutors weren't saying, "oh, ho, using a script is bad, you just can't do that." They were arguing that using the script was evidence of Swartz's intentions regarding the copies he was making. Doctrow is here violating one of Hacker News' guidelines, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Security researchers who audit systems and warn their users about defects in them are silenced with CFAA threats, giving companies a veto over who can criticize them and how."

Yes, "security researchers" who have not bothered to clear their activities with their targets beforehand have faced legal problems. Some who have have also faced those, but the legal system is supposed to tell the difference and generally does a fair job. What would you prefer as the alternative?

"Nevertheless, prosecutors charged him under the CFAA, saying that while he was allowed to access the database, doing so for an improper purpose was a hacking crime, because he "exceeded his authorization."

"This may sound sensible – or just expedient – to you. But if the prosecutors were right – if accessing a computer you were authorized to use, but in an unauthorized way – is a felony, then almost everyone is a felon."

Yes, I would argue, that is a hacking crime. (Insider threats are one of the biggest problems with computer systems because they're impossible to secure against---can anyone explain to me the authorization logic that would allow Van Buren to do his job, which apparently includes looking up "personal information", while preventing him from doing anything illegal with that information?) What else do you think you can charge him with, illegally accepting a gift in the process of doing his job?

But mostly, this article is almost entirely scare mongering. "This correct interpretation (far narrower than the DoJ's) safeguards security researchers, competitors, and other researchers doing things like gathering data from a housing site to investigate racial bias in rental ads"---which would be protected, right? Remember, intentions matter.

I get it: Information wants to be free. Cops bad. Lawyers bad. Politicians and judges bad. Anarchy good. Unfortunately, I seem to live in a world where humans are gonna keep humaning so that doesn't work.