In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court just narrowed the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act:

In a ruling delivered today, the court sided with Van Buren and overturned his 18-month conviction.

In a 37-page opinion written and delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court explained that the “exceeds authorized access” language was, indeed, too broad.

Justice Barrett said the clause was effectively making criminals of most US citizens who ever used a work resource to perform unauthorized actions, such as updating a dating profile, checking sports scores, or paying bills at work.

What today’s ruling means is that the CFAA cannot be used to prosecute rogue employees who have legitimate access to work-related resources, which will need to be prosecuted under different charges.

The ruling does not apply to former employees accessing their old work systems because their access has been revoked and they’re not “authorized” to access those systems anymore. //.

Clive Robinson • June 7, 2021 9:43 AM

I’ve already commented on why the law was technically very bad.

But a saliant legal point was that it confused contracts and legislation.

That is it alowed a non legalistive organidation such as a corporation to write a document that had criminal penalties.

That is wrong by any measure.

In the US you get taught that,

A tort arises from a breach of a private duty and a crime arises from a breach of a public duty.

The two should never ever be confused getting on for atleast two millennia of jurisprudence has repeatedly shown that any cross over leads to an escalation of undesirable outcomes and other unintended consequences that easily cascade into what becomes a runaway set of consequences.

But then US legislators have a history going right back to the constirution of at the best antipathy towards democracy right through to ensuring that the citizens have no rights in any form.

The CFAA was an insidious form of the age old game of “Rights Striping” by ensuring a “non equity of arms” which favours those that see themselves as entitled through the holding of property and directly or indirectly other humans as chattels or endentured servitude.

Last summer, we got our first glimpse of Apple TV's hotly anticipated adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of novels when Apple released a teaser trailer during the 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference. Production on the new show, which stars Jared Harris and Lee Pace, shut down last March due to the pandemic, but filming resumed last October. No official air date besides "late 2021" has surfaced, but there are a few tantalizing extra glimpses in the streaming platform's new summer (and beyond) preview trailer, per the eagle eye of The Spaceshipper on Twitter.

Mild spoilers for the first book in the Foundation series below.)

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The series started as eight short stories by Asimov that appeared in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and early 1950. Those stories were inspired in part by Edward Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the first four were collected, along with a new introductory story, and published as Foundation in 1951. The next pair of stories became Foundation and Empire (1952), and the final two stories appeared in 1953's Second Foundation. Asimov's publishers eventually convinced him to continue the series, starting with two sequels: Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986). Next came a pair of prequels: Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993), the latter published posthumously (Asimov died in 1992).

The original trilogy centered on mathematician Hari Seldon, who has developed a mathematical approach to sociology that he calls "psychohistory." Psychohistory enables him to predict the future of large populations—like the Galactic Empire, which incorporates all inhabitants of the Milky Way. Unfortunately, Seldon's theory predicts an imminent collapse of the empire—well, in 500 years, which is certainly imminent on galactic time scales. This will usher in a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years, after which a second empire will arise. The news is not received well by the members of the Committee on Public Safety, who essentially rule the empire, and Seldon is forced to stand trial for treason, along with a brilliant young mathematical protégé named Gaal. //

In his defense, Seldon argues that he cannot stop the collapse, but there is a way to limit those Dark Ages to just 1,000 years. He proposes creating a Foundation, a group of the most intelligent minds in the empire, charged with preserving all human knowledge in the Encyclopedia Galactica. Rather than executing Seldon, the committee decides to exile him, along with the members of the new Foundation, to a remote world called Terminus, where they can begin compiling the encyclopedia. Much of the first book in the trilogy follows the establishment of the colony on Terminus and the various political machinations that shape its early history, along with a startling revelation: unbeknownst to the committee, Seldon has established a second Foundation at the other end of the galaxy.

We don't yet know how much of this history will be included in the TV adaptation or how closely the show's narrative will follow the books.

Now Cotton — along with colleagues Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Rick Scott (R-FL) — has introduced the China Trade Relations Act to “strip China of its Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status and return to the pre-2001 system.”

If passed, the legislation would require China to obtain Most Favored Nation (MFN) status through annual presidential approval, per the requirements of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. The bill would also expand the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to include human rights and trade abuses as disqualifying factors for MFN status. Companion legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Chris Smith (R-New Jersey).

“For twenty years, China has held permanent most-favored-nation status, which has supercharged the loss of American manufacturing jobs. It’s time to protect American jobs and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for their forced labor camps and egregious human rights violations,” said Cotton.

Fox News Channel’s Steve Hilton aired a video from December 17, 2012, showing Dr. Anthony Fauci explaining what types of research experiments constitute “gain-of-function” — and that, surprise, surprise, those very types of experiments were funded by NIH at that time and continued through 2020, despite government moratoriums on such research.

So, what does that mean? It means that Fauci lied to Congress on May 11 (and probably on other dates) and that NIH Director Francis Collins repeatedly blatantly lied to the public in interviews. //

Hawkwood markvol
14 hours ago
My theory is that "bureaucrats" are gain-of-function enhanced democrats.

Imagine being so anti-Trump that you would throw even historic peace agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab nations down the memory hole just because President Donald Trump brokered those deals.

Well, according to a report from the Washington Free Beacon, that’s exactly what’s happening. According to the report, based on emails reviewed by The Washington Free Beacon, Biden’s State Department is discouraging employees from “referring to the historic peace agreements signed by Israel and its Arab neighbors by its official name, the Abraham Accords.” The name “Abraham Accords” has also “been erased from a wide array of official State Department communications as the new administration presses officials to refer to the Trump-era deals as ‘normalization agreements.'”

Kamala Harris flew to Guatemala yesterday to talk with their officials about the “root causes” of the border crisis in our country.

Harris showed how narcissistic she was by handing out cookies with her face on them to the reporters on the plane. Then, when she landed in Guatemala, she was met by protesters with big signs saying “Trump Won,” and “Go Home.” //

Giammattei explained how the immediate policy changes upon Biden’s inauguration (such as the reversal of Trump’s “Safe Third Country” policy) immediately led to smugglers organizing in Guatemala bring kids illegally to the United States. //

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
You mean Biden’s campaigning on amnesty, open borders & free healthcare for all illegal aliens wasn’t a good idea?

No kidding.

#BidenBorderCrisis.
RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Guatemalan president says Joe Biden’s “message” is contributing to the 21-year high in border crossings

The horrors of experimentation on aborted babies are too easily purged from our thoughts, but they should stoke our national conscience. //

Child sacrifice strains the limits of moral relativity, yet too often abortion gets a pass. There are various arguments why, but at least it’s a debate. In contrast, most Americans are only semi-conscious of the use of aborted babies for medical experiments. Our tax dollars pay for it through the National Institutes of Health, but more often than not, we never hear about it.

In a recent Newsweek editorial, David Daleiden reminded the public that scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have been taking five-month-old aborted infants, cutting out their body parts, then grafting their scalps onto mice, or otherwise harvesting their organs for medical use. Our natural response is revulsion. For the sake of sanity, though, our momentary outrage is usually followed by forgetfulness.

Messages were routed to an FBI-owned server and decrypted with master key. //

The Federal Bureau of Investigation created a company that sold encrypted devices to hundreds of organized crime syndicates, resulting in 800 arrests in 16 countries, law-enforcement authorities announced today. The FBI and agencies in other countries intercepted 27 million messages over 18 months before making the arrests in recent days, and more arrests are planned.

The FBI teamed up with Australian Federal Police to target drug trafficking and money laundering. They "strategically developed and covertly operated an encrypted device company, called ANOM, which grew to service more than 12,000 encrypted devices to over 300 criminal syndicates operating in more than 100 countries, including Italian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and international drug trafficking organizations," Europol said today. //

"For years, organized crime figures around the globe relied on the devices to orchestrate international drug shipments, coordinate the trafficking of arms and explosives, and discuss contract killings, law enforcement officials said," the Times wrote. "Users trusted the devices' security so much that they often laid out their plans not in code, but in plain language."

Unbeknownst to users, messages were routed to an FBI-owned server and decrypted with a master key controlled by the FBI. //

The operation was given the names "Trojan Shield" and "Greenlight." Europol called it "one of the largest and most sophisticated law enforcement operations to date in the fight against encrypted criminal activities." //

The FBI has complained about encryption in consumer products for years, with one FBI official in 2018 reportedly calling Apple "jerks." Today's announcement demonstrates again that law enforcement has the ability to target criminals' use of encrypted communications without making mass-market devices less secure.

"In every SpaceX animation, we saw a fade into black right when people walked out of the rocket on Mars," Ellis said. "So what was clear [is] that there needed to be some other company building humanity's industrial base on Mars. Replicating the infrastructure for a million people that live on Mars is a massive undertaking, and I think a lot of people need to work on it."

Relativity seeks to do this by pushing forward 3D-printing technology. Ellis intends to disrupt the long-standing aerospace practice of using fixed tooling to manufacture rockets, which are then finished using a hands-on process of adding thousands of parts. Ultimately, Relatively hopes to use what it learns about printing rockets on Earth to additively manufacture habitats and other materials on the surface of Mars.

Even as Relativity Space seeks to augment the efforts by Musk and SpaceX to make humans a multiplanetary species, the company is also directly competing with its much more established rival. If successfully developed, the Terran R would challenge SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for both government and commercial launch contracts. //

The Terran R vehicle will have a first stage that lands on a drone ship at sea, and the second stage will retain its payload fairing after satellite separation. Then, this combined stack, the second stage and payload fairing, will make a propulsive landing from orbit.

"To my knowledge, we're only the second fully reusable vehicle other than Starship that's even been planned," Ellis said. //

The rocket's first stage will be printed from a custom aluminum alloy, and the upper stage will be built from a more exotic, heat-resistant material to withstand re-entry temperatures. For the rocket's first missions, Relativity will seek to bring back the first stage, incorporating full-vehicle reuse over time, Ellis said.

If all of this sounds ambitious, that's because it is, especially for a company that has yet to launch a rocket or even perform an integrated-stage test firing. However, Relativity's steady growth, to about 400 employees now, and total fundraising of $1.34 billion lend some credence to the idea that it may indeed be successful.

Much has been written in the last couple of days regarding United States District Court Judge Roger Benitez’s decision on Friday declaring California’s ban on “assault weapons” — as defined in the statute — to be an unconstitutional limit on the right of California citizens “to keep and bear arms” under the Second Amendment.

But this was not Judge Benitez’s first foray into Second Amendment jurisprudence that produced a favorable outcome for advocates of Second Amendment rights. Back in August 2020, the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court decision that similarly found as unconstitutional a related California statute — one banning the ownership of “large-capacity magazines.” The author of that lower court decision was Judge Roger Benitez.

In between those two decisions, there was an “en banc” decision from the Ninth Circuit on a different subject of constitutional disagreement over the meaning of the Second Amendment. In Young v. Hawaii, the Ninth Circuit upheld Hawaii’s “open carry” firearm regulations, which require applicants applying for an “open carry” license to show either an “exceptional case or demonstrated urgency” to carry a firearm. The plaintiff, George Young, twice applied for an “open carry” license, but his applications were denied based on his failure to meet the “exceptional case or demonstrated urgency” requirements. //

there are some interesting aspects of Judge Benitez’s opinion on Friday that are worth noting because he takes some time to explain where Second Amendment jurisprudence stands — 13 years after the Supreme Court changed everything with its decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller.

As Judge Benitez wrote, there was Second Amendment law pre-Heller, and there is Second Amendment law post-Heller, and only the latter seems important to Judge Benitez — unlike the majority view in the en banc decision in Young v. Hawaii. //

The Second Amendment “elevates above all other interests the right of lawabiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” Heller, 554 U.S., at 635. The Supreme Court clearly holds that the Second Amendment protects guns commonly owned by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.

This case is not about extraordinary weapons lying at the outer limits of Second Amendment protection. The banned “assault weapons” are not bazookas, howitzers, or machineguns… Instead, the firearms deemed “assault weapons” are fairly ordinary, popular, modern rifles. This is an average case about average guns used in average ways for average purposes.

Prior to 2008 [Heller], lower court opinions did not acknowledge that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to own firearms, or that the right applied against the states. See e.g., United States v. Hancock, 231 F.3d 557, 565–66 (9th Cir. 2000) (“[T]his court has concluded that ‘the Second Amendment is a right held by the states, and does not protect the possession of a weapon by a private citizen.’”)

Judicial recognition of an individual right to keep and bear arms to be respected by the states would come later with the Heller decision in 2008 and the McDonald decision in

2010. //

Heller involved a “federal” law, in that it was gun ownership prohibition in the District of Columbia. McDonald extended Heller to state and local regulations by holding that rights under the Second Amendment were applicable to state law under the 14th Amendment. //

When a severe restriction on the core right of self-defense amounts to a destruction of the Second Amendment right, it is unconstitutional under any level of scrutiny. “‘A law that imposes such a severe restriction on the fundamental right of self-defense of the home that it amounts to a destruction of the Second Amendment right is unconstitutional under any level of scrutiny.’” //

DeeInFL
17 hours ago edited
This line of questions from Justice Alito I found quite interesting during oral hearings on New York State Rifle & Pistol case.

Alito: Mr. Dearing, are the people in New York less safe now as a result of the enactment of the new city and state laws than they were before?

Dearing: No, I don't think so. We made a judgment, expressed by our police commissioner, that it was consistent with public safety to repeal the prior rule and to move forward without it.

Alito: Well, if they're not less safe, then what possible justification could there have been for the old rule, which you have abandoned?

Dearing did not have an answer except that the city's arbitrary restrictions on transporting firearms may have made its other rules a bit easier to enforce.

Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) offers exciting promise in working with tissues unresponsive to conventional efforts such as nerve pain, damage or injury, scar tissue, adhesions, and the ability to facilitate healing of acute and chronic injuries. GMA also finds it is a useful supportive treatment as part of comprehensive treatment for chronic conditions like chronic Lyme disease, CFS, and fibromyalgia.

The frequencies appear to change a variety of conditions and tissues, and change pain and function in a large number of clinical conditions. FSM is especially effective at treating nerve and muscle pain, inflammation, and scar tissue.

The CustomCare© Pack comes with Windows compatible software and one pocket-sized microcurrent satellite. The CustomCare© software resides on the practitioner’s Windows PC computer and allows the practitioner to prescribe specific protocols for any specific patient. The software contains 150 updated protocols from the AutoCare1300© and many more!

Software is meant for professional use only and it is not recommended to be sold or provided to patients. If the practitioner does provide the software to a patient, it is the practitioners responsibility to show the patient how to use the software and prescribe the patient treatment protocols. PDI cannot provide medical advice. ///

Used by some specialists in treatment for POTS.

Penn State musicologist Marica Tacconi discovered the fakes on sabbatical in Venice. //

Penn State musicologist Marica Tacconi wasn't planning to discover forged music books when she started her sabbatical research at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice in 2018. But when she encountered an embellished, leather-bound music book ostensibly from the 17th century, something about it struck her as off. Subsequent analysis showed that her instincts had been right: the book was an early 20th-century forgery, as were two other music books, supposedly from the same period, that she examined in the collection. Tacconi gives a full account of her investigations in a recent paper published in the Journal of Seventeenth Century Music.

The Marciana Library acquired the music books—catalogued as MSS 740, 742, and 743—in 1916 and 1917 from a musician and book dealer named Giovanni Concina. But before Tacconi undertook her analysis, the books had neither received much scholarly attention nor been studied as a set. //

david newallArs Scholae Palatinaereplyabout 9 hours agoReader Fav
I wonder why they were forged. Apparently not for financial gain as they sold for so little. Somebody went to a lot of effort and didn't receive fame or fortune. //

agkhayyamWise, Aged Ars Veteran about 9 hours ago

david newall wrote:
I wonder why they were forged. Apparently not for financial gain as they sold for so little. Somebody went to a lot of effort and didn't receive fame or fortune.

And now this feels like the beginning of a Dan Brown novel...

The Force was with me (well, except for the delay) when I recently got to fly on the United Airlines Boeing 737-800 decorated for Star Wars fans.

I had no idea the final leg of my journey to Puerto Rico would be on the Star Wars plane, but I was thrilled to see it at the gate. I thought it would be fun for you all to see the outside and inside of this cool plane, too.

For more news and AvGeek

A billion-dollar judgment in a piracy lawsuit involving a major Internet service provider could force ISPs to terminate more customer accounts and "punish the innocent and guilty alike," advocacy groups have warned. Urging an appeals court to overturn the ruling, the groups wrote that "upholding this verdict would result in innocent and vulnerable users losing essential Internet access." //

"In going after Internet service providers for the actions of just a few of their users, Sony Music, other major record labels, and music publishing companies have found a way to cut people off of the Internet based on mere accusations of copyright infringement," the EFF wrote in a blog post announcing the filing. "When these music companies sued Cox Communications, an ISP, the court got the law wrong. It effectively decided that the only way for an ISP to avoid being liable for infringement by its users is to terminate a household or business's account after a small number of accusations—perhaps only two. The court also allowed a damages formula that can lead to nearly unlimited damages, with no relationship to any actual harm suffered. If not overturned, this decision will lead to an untold number of people losing vital Internet access as ISPs start to cut off more and more customers to avoid massive damages."

A jury ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels. Sony, Universal, and Warner had sued the cable ISP in 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. A district judge upheld the verdict in January 2021, approving the $1 billion judgment and paving the way for to Cox appeal to the 4th Circuit. //

Given this reality, the stakes of this case for Internet users are enormous. The district court's judgment and the jury's damage award in this case are founded on fundamental errors of law that, if affirmed, will force ISPs to terminate more subscribers with less justification or risk staggering liability. First, the judgment relies on unwarranted extensions of copyright's two "secondary liability" doctrines, which will encourage ISPs to terminate subscribers when more proportionate means of addressing infringement exist. Second, the staggering and poorly justified $1,000,000,000 award of statutory damages against Cox thwarts basic principles of due process and the public interest. //

Previous court decisions set important limits that were disregarded by the district court in the Cox case, the group argued:

First, vicarious liability requires proof of direct financial benefit to the defendant from another's copyright infringement. But since all subscribers (including infringers) pay a monthly fee for Internet access, courts have agreed that an ISP's receipt of such fees is not sufficient to meet this burden. Instead, the plaintiff must show in addition that the customer was "drawn" to use the defendant's Internet service (as opposed to any other Internet service) because of the availability of infringing copies of the plaintiff's works.

Second, because infringement occurs on all Internet networks, this Court, in BMG [see BMG Rights Management v. Cox Communications], refused to impose contributory liability on an ISP simply because it had generalized knowledge that some customers will use the ISP's Internet service to infringe. Instead, contributory liability can be imposed only where an ISP knows of (or willfully blinds itself to) specific acts of infringement by particular subscribers and also knows "that infringement is substantially certain to result from [its] continued provision of Internet access to particular subscribers."

The district court disregarded these critical limitations, sustaining vicarious liability even though there was no proof that infringers were specifically "drawn" to the Cox service, and finding on summary judgment that as a matter of law, Cox had the knowledge necessary to contributory liability solely from receiving the plaintiffs' DMCA notices. It refused to submit the knowledge issue to the jury despite Cox's showing evidence that some of [the] DMCA notices were false and that Cox could not be substantially certain of future infringement by subscribers named in the notices.

Kagan’s conclusion is blunt: U.S. law “generally requires a lawful admission before a person can obtain LPR status. Sanchez was not lawfully admitted, and his TPS does not alter that fact. He therefore cannot become a permanent resident of this country.” //

Immigration advocates will lament the fact that many of the 400,000 people with temporary protected status are illegal immigrants and that these people will not be able to become permanent residents. Yet blatant violations of immigration law do not disappear when Congress grants illegal immigrants a temporary status due to horrible conditions in their home countries.

The Court made the right decision in this case.

The below table has each device, its release year, the generation it was a part of, the short name, and serial number prefixes to help identify it.