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Re: PATRIOT/USA followup: ongoing House debate

2001-10-12 17:10:03
In message 
<200110121944(_dot_)f9CJikxv012910(_at_)foo-bar-baz(_dot_)cc(_dot_)vt(_dot_)edu>,
 Valdis.Kletniek
s(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu writes:


There was also the equating of "hacking" to "terrorism".  With the retroactive
removal of a statute of limitations.  And provisions for "providing significan
t
aid" to terrorists.  This means that Steve Bellovin could (under the original
proposals) end up in jail for life, because he wrote a paper on TCP sequence
numbers, because Mitnick used a sequence number attack on somebody.

Nah -- that would be an ex post facto law, since it wasn't illegal to
publish that in 1989.

Of course, I may have to worry about my next paper...  And although ex
post facto laws are banned by the Constitution, there are (or at least
were) other provisions of dubious constitutionality in that bill.

Ah, well -- time to get ready for the traditional flood of "out of the
office" autoreplies...

                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
                Full text of "Firewalls" book now at http://www.wilyhacker.com