20150203 Fünf Jahre Gefängnis für einen Link

03.02.2015 Fünf Jahre Gefängnis für einen Link

The White House’s plan to make sharing certain links a crime

On January 22nd, investigative journalist Barrett Brown was sentenced to an obscene 63 months in prison, in part for sharing a hyperlink to a stolen document that he did not steal, and despite the fact that he was not guilty of a crime for linking to it. The attempt to paint merely linking to information as criminal has serious repercussions and represents a dangerous precedent for the practices of journalists. More troubling for press freedom, however, is the White House's proposed expansion of the CAFA, which will make it much easier for prosecutors to charge journalists with publishing hacked documents in the future.

The White House recently issued a proposal for radically expanding the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act CFAA, which would make it much easier for journalists to be charged for linking to hacked documents containing passwords—regardless of intent.

The trouble comes in a section where the White House removes the phrase “with the intent to defraud” from the section criminalizing “trafficking” in passwords. So instead of sharing passwords for the purpose of committing fraud, you know merely have to share them purposefully with the knowledge they may be used by others.

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