Academic

Identity Theft Harassment?

Posted on February 27, 2009

Gossip

Posted on February 25, 2009
This post is based on an article I've been working on with one of my students. It's about cyber bullying, and the issue of gossip keeps coming up. It also comes up in the context of other online crimes like stalking and harassment.Gossip comes up when we consider the propriety of using criminal law ? crimes like stalking, harassment and defamation ? to discourage people from posting certain types of information online...

RFID Crime

Posted on February 23, 2009
On February 10, Nevada Senate Bill 125 was introduced into the Nevada legislature and then referred to the Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee.The Committee is scheduled to discuss the bill today, February 23, 2009. Section 1 of the bill would add the following new crime to the Nevada criminal code:1...

Exclusionary Rule

Posted on February 19, 2009
In this post, I?m going to take issue (a bit) with some comments Bruce Schneier included in his February 15 version of Cryptogram. The post was about the Supreme Court?s recent decision in Herring v. U.S. 129 S.Ct. (U.S. Supreme Court 2009). The facts in the case are very simple: a police officer did a warrant check on Bennie Herring to see if there were any outstanding warrants for his arrest...

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Hue and Cry

Posted on February 17, 2009
As Wikipedia explains, at English common law the hue and cry ?was a process by which bystanders were summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who had been witnessed in the act of committing a crime.? The hue and cry was part of the system England used to enforce criminal law centuries ago, before professional police appeared (which began in the nineteenth century)...

Keeping Your Jurisdictions Straight

Posted on February 16, 2009
This post is about a perfectly logical ? but completely wrong ? argument a defendant made in moving to suppress evidence in a criminal case. The case is U.S. v. Christie, 570 F. Supp.2d 657 (U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey 2008).Basically, Christie was charged with multiple counts of possessing, receiving and advertising child pornography, all in violation of federal law...

"Damage"

Posted on February 13, 2009
This is not a post that's going to resolve an issue of law or policy related to computer crime. It's a post in which I'm trying to work through an issue that came to my attention recently.More precisely, it?s a rumination on the notion of ?damage? to computers; more precisely, it?s a rumination on the notion of ?damage? to computers as the term is used in cybercrime statutes...

Viewing Child Pornography as a Crime

Posted on February 11, 2009
I?m indebted to Sigmund, News Editor for SLentrepreneur Magazine, for calling this to my attention: The Nevada legislature is debating a bill that would let Nevada authorities prosecute people who simply view child pornography online. Currently, Nevada like most, if not all, U...

Remote Murder?

Posted on February 09, 2009
I did a post not long ago about the possibility of using computer technology to commit murder. David Schumann, a Wisconsin lawyer and proprietor of the GPS Evidence Issues blog, recently sent me an email suggesting a new and pretty devious way to commit computer murder...

Malware Possession

Posted on February 06, 2009
I assume everyone knows what malware (e.g., computer viruses, worms) is. In the U.S., it is a federal crime to use malware to intentionally cause ?damage without authorization? to a computer that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce...

"Stigma Plus"

Posted on February 04, 2009
This post isn?t about a cybercrime case. It?s about what I think is an interesting issue concerning the use of online postings to shame some people and thereby deter others from following their example.Here are the facts that led to the filing of this civil case:On or about June 10, 2008, petitioner, with no prior arrests or convictions, was arrested and charged by the Nassau County Police Department and the Nassau County District Attorney's Office with a violation of the Vehicle and Traffic Law (VTL) § 1192...

Co-Tenant Consent to Search Computer

Posted on February 02, 2009
As I explained in an earlier post, consent is an exception to the 4th Amendment?s requirement that officers get a warrant to search a place or a thing and seize any evidence of criminal activity they find. As I also explained in that post, to be valid, consent to search has to have been given by someone (i) who had actual authority to consent to the search or (ii) who did not have actual authority to consent but whom officers reasonably (though mistakenly) believed did have such authority...

"Without Authorization"

Posted on January 30, 2009
As I?ve noted before, there are two different kinds of computer hacking (or computer trespass) crimes: Accessing a computer without being authorized to do so (outsider attack) and exceeding the scope of one?s authorized access to a computer (insider attack)...

Authentication and the Erased Hard Drive

Posted on January 28, 2009
As I explained in an earlier post, evidence must be authenticated before it can be admitted in a trial or other court proceeding. That is, the party offering the evidence (the proponent) must show that it is what it purports to be. Rule 901(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence governs authentication in federal cases...

New Book

Posted on January 27, 2009
My new book is out (actually, it's been out for about a week).It's essentially about how the traditional threats to social order -- crime, terrorism (which is a kind of crime) and warfare -- can morph and fuse when they move online.The book analyzes the attribution and response problems this creates, but from a primarily legal perspective...

Passwords

Posted on January 26, 2009
Maybe you?ve seen one of the news stories about the revised Georgia statute (Georgia Code § 41-1-12) that now requires sex offenders to turn their Internet passwords, screen names and email addresses over to authorities. The purpose of the revised statute is to give authorities the ability to track what sex offenders are doing online, to, in the words of one news story, ?make sure? they ?aren?t stalking children online or chatting with them about off-limits topics...

Technology as an Aggravating Factor

Posted on January 23, 2009
As you may have seen, the Supreme Court rather recently granted certiorari in U.S. v. Abuelhawa, 523 F.3d 415 (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit 2008). That, of course, means the Court will hear arguments on whether the Fourth Circuit?s decision is correct...

Chutzpah in Kansas City

Posted on January 21, 2009
Maybe you saw this story: It says a Kansas City woman has been indicted by a federal grand jury for using her U.S. Department of Agriculture laptop to manage ?prostitution businesses and correspond with clients?. According to the story, Laurie Lynn McConnell, a statistician for the USDA?s Risk Management Agency, operated the prostitution businesses with John Miller, who also lives in Kansas City...

Motion to Quash Search Warrant

Posted on January 19, 2009
I ran across something I wasn?t familiar with in a recent decision from a federal district court in Florida: U.S. v. Shaygan, 2009 WL 86678 (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida).In Shaygan, the defendant filed a motion to quash a warrant to search a laptop...

Misusing Authorized Access?

Posted on January 16, 2009
In a post I did a couple of years ago, I talked about the ?insider? hacking crime: exceeding one?s authorized access to a computer to do . . . something. The premise of the crime is that we need to make it illegal for insiders ? people who legitimately have access to a computer or computer system ? knowingly to exceed the scope of that access in order to destroy data, copy data, install a logic bomb that shuts down the system, etc...

Computer Theft

Posted on January 14, 2009
A lot of state statutes and the general federal computer crime statute, 18 U.S. Code § 1030, criminalize the theft of computer data. And I?ve done at least one post about computer data theft. As I explained, computer data theft is a little different from real-world theft because the data being stolen is usually copied ...

Computer Forgery

Posted on January 12, 2009
This post is about computer forgery . . . or, more accurately, about what is not computer forgery. Like many of my posts, this one is inspired by a case: People v. Carmack, 34 A.D.3d 1299, 827 N.Y.S.2d 383 (Supreme Court of New York 2006). In 2003, an Erie County Grand Jurycharged [Howard Carmack] with three counts of Forgery in the Second Degree, arising out of [his] actions in sending electronic mail messages (`e-mail?) purporting to have originated from three different e-mail accounts without permission from the accounts' owners...

(Attempted) Computer Murder

Posted on January 09, 2009
There has for years been speculation about whether a computer could be used to commit murder, i.e., to intentionally kill a human being. I was researching that issue for something I?m writing, and managed to track down what seems to be the original version of a story I?ve heard for a long time...

Fear

Posted on January 07, 2009
I?m reading a great book: The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner. I highly recommend it. It?s an analysis of how and why our fears are often irrational; we fear things that are not particularly likely, and don?t fear things we should.In one of this early chapters, he talks about how people refused to fly in the months after 911, and drove instead...

They?re heeere!! . . . Remote Computer Searches

Posted on January 05, 2009
I did a post not long ago about the European Union?s announcing new initiatives against cybercrime, one of which was to let law enforcement officers conduct remote computer searches. Since then, more information surfaced about precisely what this means...

The 861 Defense

Posted on January 02, 2009
This post is maybe only tangentially about cybercrime because it?s about an activity ? what some would call a scam ? that is primarily perpetrated via websites. The scam (which is what I?m going to call it) is an updated version of something that was going on when I clerked for a federal judge twenty years ago...

Constructive Possession

Posted on December 31, 2008
Most people know that law makes it a crime to possess certain things, like drugs or child pornography. Most people may not know that under the law, there are two kinds of possession: actual and constructive.Here?s how a pattern jury instruction from the U...

Jurisdiction and Practicing Medicine without a License

Posted on December 29, 2008
As I?ve noted before, jurisdiction is a court?s power to act in a case. If a court doesn?t have jurisdiction to hear and decide a particular case, then the judgment, or conviction, it enters will void and unenforceable. As I?ve also noted, in criminal cases jurisdiction is a court?s power to adjudicate the charges brought against someone...

Fraud and Interstate Commerce

Posted on December 26, 2008
Section 1343 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code creates the crime of wire fraud as follows:Whoever, having devised . . . any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire ...

Invasion of Privacy

Posted on December 24, 2008
A few states have criminal invasion of privacy statutes. Most of them are pretty narrow in scope; they make it a crime to photograph or videotape someone when they?re in a bathroom or a dressing room or similar places. Other invasion of privacy statutes make it a crime to photograph or videotape someone?s ?intimate parts? under their clothes...

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