Very well put, I agree with every word. Yes, it is definitely intended, including the following:

'And it’s no excuse to say that the vast majority of these cases will never be prosecuted. As the Ninth Circuit explained, “Ubiquitous, seldom-prosecuted crimes invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Instead of pursuing only suspects of actual crimes, it opens the door for prosecutors to go after people because the government doesn’t like them.'

People lobbying for these laws and the legislators passing them are not stupid. They are as well aware of the above effect as the Ninth Circuit or anyone else. You really have to question their intentions before it is too late.

I agree. It's a shame legislators don't see this sort of thing in the same light as the court described in the article. Laws like this have far reaching and sinister consequences.

This sort of problem is summed up nicely in the original post - "As the Ninth Circuit explained, “Ubiquitous, seldom-prosecuted crimes invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”"

I'm not so sure about not seeing it in the same light. It's more likely that they either don't know or worse, don't care.

I think it has more to do with their priorities. They want to be reelected, which has become less a matter of policy stance and more of financing campaigns.

While I agree with the gist of your post, I don't think it's correct to say there are no "unintended consequences". For some, most likely including those who originally introduced or lobbied for the law, the consequences may be entirely intended. Even so, there were many people that had to examine (to a large or small extent, depending) the law before it was ratified, and I think it's likely not all of considered or wanted all the consequences.

I think that's an important distinction to make (it's not every legislator that's a corporate shill or working to repress an aspect of free choice based on their own perceived moral superiority).

The lawmakers who passed the CFAA generally assumed that computers were industrial equipment, and that computer networks were like the railroad network. It was still assumed that home computer access would be in the form of online services and thin clients, and that PCs were just a hobby (if they had even heard of PCs). To them, unauthorized use of a computer was the equivalent of stealing a freight train.

None of the consequences of the law were unintended. The lawmakers never gave any thought to the idea of hackers being something other than criminals. The idea of PCs being the dominant mode of computing remains foreign to most of our lawmakers, who think that their laptops, desktops, and tablets are just terminals used to connect to industrial systems. Killing the hacker spirit is not unintended; the law envisioned a world without hackers at all.

It is still assumed by those in power that programming is something you do for pay (and for the maximum pay you can find), that source code is a valuable industrial secret, and that the Internet is divided into "clients" and "servers" (i.e. it is just a shadow of the world, which is "producers" and "consumers"). Sure, there are "hobbyists" out there who play with computers, but the serious work and the dissemination of technology is done by industry. It is the same worldview that says that research can only be done by those with an affiliation and that legal documents can only be read by lawyers (hence the prosecution of Aaron Swartz).

This is really simple. Unless you think every legislator that voted to ratify this believes that the outcomes posited by the article are valid, correct, and without problem, then there are unintended consequences. That is, literally, a consequence of the law they didn't intend.

Do you really think that every legislator has no problem with any eventual use of this law?

> devised by people that want to enforce a repressive sexual morality on society. It absolutely is their intention to make any sexually oriented activity by anyone under 18 illegal.

A little off topic, but I just have to ask, at what age does it go from repressive to appropriate?

At the age where harm is seen. A bit of retroactive analysis may be necessary at first.

>We are considerably less free than the previous generation

This is patently false. The internet and other technologies have opened up massive vistas of freedom. Your bunker siege mentality, exciting as it may be, is an illusion.

The internet and other technologies have been followed directly by new, repressive laws that make what was legal before illegal, and criminalized what used to be mere misdemeanors.

It has also increased surveillance on all citizens to a point former East European totalitarian regimes could only dream of.

They only freedom we've gained it the freedom to globally bitch about it. Any action we may actually take with the help of the internet is rapidly being criminalized. Those "massive vistas of freedom" are just a matter of inertia.

This "bunker siege mentality" is not an illusion when every week new measures and laws are introduced to take away freedoms we used to have 25 years ago.

While the internet has liberated many aspects of humanity (communications, publishing, artistic and scientific collaboration, etc.) there has been diminishment of meatspace freedoms, in some cases as a direct reaction by the former captors.

I'm guessing you're not black, are you? Were your Japanese parents placed in an internment camp during WWII? Were you a communist in the McCarthy era?

It's not that we have less freedom now, it's that freedom is different. Now, we torture people and hold them indefinitely in Guantanamo. We spy on our citizens. We still haven't overcome racism or sexism. But there are definitely areas where we've improved greatly.

Perhaps "considerably less free" was meant to refer to the enormous increase in this country's prison population over the past few decades. That increase was driven by a ballooning legal code, vast expanses in law enforcement power, and a general disregard for the most important civil rights in this country. While most non-prisoners walk about freely, as though they are entirely innocent, it is nearly impossible for any US citizen to claim that they have not committed any felony offenses.

Prison population is driven almost entirely by a few drug prohibitions and general poverty issues, not a ballooning legal code.

They mean 'negative liberty,' you mean 'positive liberty.'