Ashcroft's Anti-Terrorism Act may convict us all ...

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

There's a  fun  discussion  over  on  slashdot  about  John
Ashcroft's  proposed  Anti-Terrorism  Act.  It includes all
"computer crimes" as terrorist acts, and the definition  is
fairly  generous.   Most  of  the people on this list would
probably qualify as terrorists in the course of their jobs.
If  you  ever  run any programs that test any computers for
known security holes, you are a terrorist.

One of the fun things is that it makes for a  good  anti-MS
argument. One of the clauses includes as a terrorist anyone
who launches a program that attacks another computer. So if
you  use  Outlook, and you open an attachment with a virus,
this would be an act of terrorism.   The  penalty  for  the
first offense is life in a federal prison. Also, if you run
IIS, and it gets infected with  CodeRed  or  nimda  or  any
other  such  worm  which then attacks another computer, you
will be a terrorist.

Making a verbal threat against someone else's  computer  is
also a terrorist act. As far as I can tell, making a threat
against your own computer is probably legal under this act,
though  if  it  contains proprietary software, you could be
jailed under the DMCA.  But then you'd be just an  ordinary
felon, not a terrorist.

Presumably the courts will toss all this out, but  it  will
first  require  that  a lot of people be arrested and tried
for terrorism.

There's a strong push on to get it passed this week ...

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