Computer Crime - 2009 - Review Q and A

ANNOUNCEMENT: Because of the website outage Saturday night, I am extending my Q&A policy. I will respond to questions I receive until NOON on Sunday, December 13, 2009.

NOTE: I am not posting every single student question. Instead, I am only posting student questions that I believe the class, as a whole, will benefit from hearing. Some questions are too basic to deserve attention. Other questions are too advanced and nuanced. So don't take it personally if your question doesn't appear here. (Do take it personally if I don't respond to one of your questions. I might have forgotten to get to it, so if you don't hear from me in a day or two, please ask again.)

Sun, 13 Dec 2009

That's All. Good Luck!
The time to ask questions has now passed. There won't be any other entries posted to the class website. If anything important is left to say, I will send it to you via e-mail.

Good Luck!

posted at: 13:01 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Final Exam Cover Sheet
A student asked me to post my the final exam cover sheet to the course website. Here you go.

posted at: 12:59 | path: | permanent link to this entry

1030(a)(5) Sentences
Q: I'm confused by 1030(c)(4), the sentencing provisions for 1030(a)(5). Does 1030(c)(4)(G) mean that any violation of 1030(a)(5) is at least a misdemeanor? Can a 1030(a)(5)(C) violation ever be a felony?

A: Any violation of 1030(a)(5) is always at least a misdemeanor under (c)(4)(G). And 1030(a)(5)(C) can only be charged as a felony for repeat offenders under 1030(c)(4)(D). For first-time offenders, (a)(5)(C) is always a misdemeanor.

posted at: 05:21 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Must We Cite Cases?
Q: Are we required to cite cases by name in our exam answers? Can we get full credit for an answer, even if we leave out specific cases?

A: My policy has always been: I don't require case names, but I think they provide useful shorthand. You lose no points if you say, "According to the case about web scraping the travel website . . .," so long as I can tell that you're talking about EF Cultural. Moreover, you can often get all of the points without talking about any case at all, so long as you state the correct rule. In some cases, however, the facts of the exam question will be so similar to a particular case, that you might not get full credit if I can't tell that you recognized the similarity.

posted at: 04:57 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Differences between 1030(a)(5)(A) and (B) and (C)
Q: Under 1030, if there is a violation of 1030(a)(5)(A) does this also constitute a violation of the lower violations of 1030(a)(5)(B) and (C)?

A: No, not necessarily. (a)(5)(A) doesn't require an access at all, so it covers many situations that aren't covered by (B) or (C). For this reason, (A) isn't really properly thought of as a "higher violation" than (B) or (C).

For example, (A) is usually thought to be designed to cover "denial of service" attacks--attacks from outside a computer that nevertheless make the computer unreachable or unresponsive. If there wasn't a provision (A), denial of service attacks would probably not be crimes under (B) or (C), since they don't involve accesses.

posted at: 04:51 | path: | permanent link to this entry

ECPA versus the Fourth Amendment
Q: If someone complains about a police practice under both the SCA and the Fourth Amendment, and a court finds the practice complies with the SCA, couldn't the court skip the Fourth Amendment analysis, since the SCA is supposed to be more rights-protective than the Constitution?

A: No. The Court can't skip the Fourth Amendment analysis, even if it concludes a practice complies perfectly with the SCA. The SCA is supposed to comply with the Fourth Amendment, but it might not. When a defendant brings a Fourth Amendment challenge to an investigation that indisputably complies with a federal statute, a Court must still march through a Fourth Amendment analysis, because the statute might allow unconstitutional police action.

posted at: 04:39 | path: | permanent link to this entry

Saturday Night's Website Outage!
I just learned that the class website went down for a few hours Saturday night! Talk about bad timing! I hope you all were able to cope, but I'm sure it was stressful for some of you. Bad things happen on computer networks, which is almost a theme for this class, but I hope this didn't cause anybody inordinate stress. To try to ease your stress, I'll extend my question deadline until Noon today. Get me your questions by Noon, and I'll answer them.

If you're still waiting for answers from me, I'm going to try to get to all questions in the next hour, or so.

posted at: 04:13 | path: | permanent link to this entry