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Government Surveillance

Left-Right Letter Opposing CFAA Expansion

This letter refers to an April 2013 discussion draft of a bill to expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, pointing out just how out of step the draft is with popular support for narrowing the law in the wake of Aaron Swartz’s death and stressing how severely and broadly the CFAA can already be applied. The letter concludes:

It is unreasonable to expand CFAA penalties when the statute already makes illegal so much of what Americans do with computers every day. Expanding the scope of the CFAA to cover even more conduct is even more dangerous.

The politically diverse signers include the ACLU, Americans for Tax Reforms’ Digital Liberty, CDT, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Demand Progress, EFF, FreedomWorks, TechFreedom, and former prosecutor and outspoken CFAA critic Orin Kerr.