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Conviction Of Former Reuters Journalist 'Shows American Hacking Laws Are Broken'

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The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has been the cause of much grief over the years. Recently, internet activist Aaron Swartz was pursued for breaches of CFAA for downloading documents from an MIT library. He committed suicide as the investigation rumbled on.

And yesterday afternoon, former Reuters and KTXL FOX40 journalist Matthew Keys was found guilty of providing a password to hacktivist group Anonymous, which was then used to deface a story in the LA Times, run by the same company as FOX40, the Tribune Company . Keys' supporters believe he was unfairly targeted.

According to evidence presented at trial, Keys urged Anonymous members on a chat forum that the Los Angeles Times should be “demolished”. It was also claimed he changed access credentials of FOX40 employees and sent disparaging emails to readers about the company. His actions, it was alleged, knocked the mobile version of the L.A. Times offline for a day and led to as much as $929,977 in post-breach costs for the Tribune Company as it expended funds on responding to the breach, shutting backdoor access and assessing the damage.

United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner said the case showed “those who use the internet to carry out personal vendettas against former employers should know that there are consequences for such conduct”.

Keys, who was found guilty on three counts, is to be sentenced on 20 January, as Keys’ legal team prepares to appeal.

CFAA 'flawed

But internet activists believe the case was proof America’s use of the CFAA is inappropriate, noting the affected page was only offline for 40 minutes. The defense had also argued the damages were inflated in order to prosecute. Even if Keys is unlikely to face more than five years, just the threat of quarter of a century behind bars is astonishing, said David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, a charity set up after the Swartz’s death.

“The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is entirely out of sync with the way people use computers - and with a changing criminal justice paradigm that recognizes the particular undue harshness of the American criminal code,” said Segal.

“It’s idiomatic that the punishment is supposed to fit the crime, yet the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s penalty scheme remains divorced from the severities of the behaviors it’s been wielded against. Today’s conviction of Matthew Keys is yet more evidence that this needs to be fixed.With much bluster, the Department of Justice has  pointed to the absurd statutory maximal penalty for somebody in Keys’s shoes: 25 years for enabling a harm that entailed changing the words on a website for all of an hour.”

Keys, meanwhile, believes a message is being sent to journalists: to play ball, or be prosecuted. He pointed to the “targeting of James Risen at the New York Times, James Rosen at FOX News, the Associated Press' phone records and their repeated harassment of journalists who have covered and continue to cover the Edward Snowden documents”.

“When you consider what they did in those cases, and what they did to me, suddenly it doesn't seem so silly,” Keys told FORBES.

On the CFAA, Keys added: “Any law that can be used to prosecute journalists for committing acts of journalism needs to be reformed or redesigned completely.

“This prosecution served as a great litmus test for the Department of Justice in their approach of going after a journalist for committing journalism. Without real reform, it is something they will be allowed to do time and time again.”

Thus far, attempts to fix the CFAA have foundered, including Aaron's Law, named after the much-loved activist. Instead, the US is pursuing even harsher punishments.