Anti-cybercrime laws are being weaponized to repress journalism

>but why have different punishments based on what technology someone used?

So first as foundation, I see no reason to pretend that the law is always perfectly thought through and logical particularly when it comes to crime. And even when laws have been done for the time, that also doesn't mean circumstances haven't changed over the decades while the law remained static.

That said, in principle punishment embodies multiple components and a major aspect is deterrence. The deterrence value in turn interplays with components like barrier to entry, scaling of the potential harm and the likelihood of getting caught. Usage of technology can have a significant impact on all of this. It's significantly more challenging and expensive to prosecute crimes that stretch across many jurisdictions, technology can also have a multiplier effect allowing criminal actors to go after far more people, both in terms of raw numbers and in terms of finding the small percentage of the vulnerable, and perceived anonymity/impunity can further increase number of actors and their activity levels. It also has often implied a higher degree of sophistication.

All of that weighs towards a higher level of punishment even as pure game theory. That doesn't mean the present levels are correct or shouldn't be only a part of other aspects of fighting fraud that depressingly frequently get neglected, but it's not irrational to punish more when criminals are generating more damage and working hard to decrease the chance of facing any penalties at all.

You have to levers to enforce law. You can get better at catching lawbreakers or punish those that are caught harder. There are studies that show that catching a higher percentage of criminals and punishing them in a timely fashion leads to lower crime than punishing those you do catch harder. Europe in general has more police officers per capita and higher conviction rates that happen more timely. The US on the other hand spends more on prisons and has her officers. I think this is partially cultural and due to how responsibilities and finance are set up between local, state and federal government in the US.

Fraud via phone or computer is harder to catch. So the US follows it's established pattern and instead of hitting efforts for law enforcement increases punishment

The big problem with CFAA isn't particular to CFAA at all; it's that it shares the 2B1.1 loss table with all the other federal criminal statutes, and computers are very good and very fast at running the number on that table up. It's a real problem and I'm not pushing back on the idea that something should change about it, but I wouldn't characterize the problem the way you do, as the law singling out crimes involving computers.

Part of the history of CFAA was that it was passed because the state of the law preceding it didn't comfortably criminalize things like malicious hacking and denial of service; you can do those things without tripping over wire fraud.

The governing bureaucrats of the post WWII period have decided that the limited government of the previous era does not give them the level of control over citizens lives that they want. They know that rolling back existing protections is difficult politically since those pesky citizens don't know what's good for them. So our ruling betters need to be a bit more clever. They stoke fear over criminals being out of control because they are using scary new technology that the police just can't handle. Therefore we need to pass harsh new laws to control it. Of course over time that "scary new technology" becomes the routine way everybody communicates, but now without the legal protections that the old system had.

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So, (1) this is a dead letter because UN cybercrime isn't going to happen here, and (2) it's not a good treaty and I wouldn't support it anyways, but the UN cybercrime convention doesn't have any of the problematic terms discussed in this CJR article. It seeks to criminalize:

(7) Unlawful access to systems

(8) Interception and wiretapping

(9) Interfering with data (presumably: encrypting and ransoming databases)

(10) DOS attacks

(11) Knowlingly selling hacking tools to criminals

(12) Forging online documents

(13) Online wire fraud

(14) CSAM

(15) Solicitation and grooming

(16) Revenge porn

Articles 14-16 are the closest you get to something not "according to Hoyle" cybercrime. I wouldn't want them in my cybercrime treaty, but I'd be pretty chill about them being standalone domestic laws.

A reminder: no matter what a UN convention says, treaties don't preempt the US Constitution. We could not enforce a treaty that includes Nigeria's misinformation terms --- it would violate the First Amendment. (Also useful to know, contrary to widespread belief online, that a self-executing treaty is itself preempted by statutes passed after it).

Everyone is an authoritarian towards the other side.

> Grossly offensive is in the eye of the beholder

Quite right. However, certain media outlets have knowingly published false information and when pushed on this they claim that those reports happened as part of the "opinion" part of their reporting. Before you get smug, your side does it too (as does mine). I'm am less concerned with blaming people than coming up with a mitigation of these issues.

So I think we need a 2 class system of reporting. A factual part where knowingly reporting false information has consequences. And an opinion part where it doesn't. Journalists would claim they already do this but here is the new policy. Reporting must constantly and clearly show to which class the report belongs. So maybe a change in background color on websites, or a change in the frame color for videos. Something that make it visually and immediately clear to which class this reporting belongs. That way people can more accurately assess the level of credibility the reporting should have.

> Often journalists are not just protecting sources but guiding them or encouraging them.

Source?

So cajoling is a crime?

> And those sources are sometimes committing crimes like leaking trade secrets or other confidential info

I mean this with all sincerity: So what? What bearing does that have on the journalist and what they are writing?

I am also curious about that claim the other guy asked you about, “Guiding” sources and such.