A new Tennessee law makes it a crime to “transmit or display an image” online that is likely to “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to someone who sees it. Violations can get you almost a year in jail time or up to $2500 in fines.
Source: Tenn. law bans posting images that “cause emotional distress” | Ars Technica
Employees may be prosecuted under a federal antihacking statute for taking computer files that they were authorized to access and using them in a manner prohibited by the company, a federal appeals court has ruled. The case decided 2-1 Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.…
Source: Appeals Court: No Hacking Required to Be Prosecuted as a Hacker | WIRED
“any person who obtains information from any computer connected to the internet, in violation of her employer’s computer-use restrictions, is guilty of a federal crime.” — Judge Tena Campbell in dissent of the majority ruling.
Damages of up to $150,000 per infraction can make even the threat of a copyright suit terrifying—especially when a computer can easily copy millions of items…
Source: Copy some webpages, owe more than the national debt | Ars Technica
Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little
Source: Too many laws, too many prisoners | The Economist
An article about how incarceration in America has increased 400% since the 1970s, and the problems go far beyond narcotics charges.