[aklug] Re: Why hacking isn't fun anymore

From: Royce Williams <royce@alaska.net>
Date: Sat Aug 07 2010 - 20:03:51 AKDT

Christopher Howard said, on 08/07/2010 07:40 PM:
> Alaska Statute 11.46.740. Criminal use of computer.

[snip; you can see the text here as well:]

 http://touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/Statutes/Title11/Chapter46/Section740.htm

> (7) encrypts or decrypts data.

IANAL, but ... if encryption is a crime, I'll eat my hat. If your sole activity is encryption, and you aren't holding someone's data hostage (which is alreadycovered by the other bullet points), I wouldn't think that this would hold up in court. The language does say that you have to access it with "no right to do so", so I guess that's reasonable, but #7 really stands out in a list of otherwise naughty behaviors.

That "exceeding authorization" thing is key. If we learned anything from the Intel vs Randall Schwartz case (even though his conviction was expunged ten years later) that, unless it's already clearly in your job description to do security checks on the systems that you maintain, you should ask for permission before doing any pen(etration) testing or demonstration of weaknesses.

http://news.cnet.com/Intel-hacker-sentence-expunged/2100-7350_3-6164113.html

Also, though I'm sure you know this, just to be clear for any newbies, hacking != cracking. The behaviors listed in 11.46.740 (except for #7) are clearly cracking. I hack FreeBSD, shell, Perl and PHP for a living, and no crimes (other than aesthetic crimes, and maybe some architectural crimes sometimes if you ask Chris Brown) are committed. ;-)

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Royce
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Received on Sat Aug 7 20:03:54 2010

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