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Someone Annoy You On The Net? Call The FBI
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-01-09
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
There are many cybercrime issues facing the world today. Identity fraud, denial of service, hacking into national defense networks, etc. A new law however introduces an a who new aspect to cybercrime, one that goes above all the others. That crime is using the Internet to annoy others.
This is going to create a whole of problems for a lot of people. First, with almost 25 million blogs, tons of forums, not to mentions email and other routes, it becomes quite interesting. The applicable text of the law, pulled from CNET, says this:
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
This portion of the bill was tucked into a large Dept. of Justice budget bill in order to slip it in and keep it moving through. Some may argue this could have a chilling effect on several aspects of the first amendment and in all reality, it probably won't hold up.
First, enforceability is going to be a major problem. Each case of annoyance becomes a federal crime. It would be difficult to conceive of the FBI or NSA arresting people every single time they annoyed someone. With millions of bloggers and even more commenters, there is no practical way to enforce this, none. There's just no way to do it.
Then there's the chilling effect part. This could apply to blogs, chat rooms, forums, and even newspaper editorials that took a perhaps snarky side of things. What about pop-up ads, and other emails one find annoying? They could all be included. This law violates the first amendment outright and when it's challenged, and it surely will be, then it'll be struck down swiftly. This law most certainly affects free speech and press, not to mention a number others.
While there are certain individuals who deserve not to be annoyed, this law creates an open-ended route that will halt speech on the Internet and that violates the first amendment. For a whole host of reasons, this is bad law. One can expect it to be challenged soon and then it will come down.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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