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Kidnapping, Theft and Rape Are Not “Cyber” Crimes

Kidnap. Rape. There are no lesser words that can be used to describe what happened to the daughter of an anti-spam investigator in Russia.
The criminals behind these vicious acts were also responsible for large spamming organization associated with Russian Mob activity.
When someone is mugged, harassed, kidnapped or raped on a sidewalk, we don’t call it “sidewalk crime” and call for new laws to regulate sidewalks. It is crime, and those who commit crimes are subject to the full force of the law.

Omnibus Cybersecurity Bill May Not Go Where Original Authors Intended

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has asked that the cybersecurity bills currently in front of various committees be combined into one single, omnibus bill, which would presumably then be attached to the defense authorizations bill. Here’s where we start to get worried.
Each of the bills we’ve seen (and we surely haven’t seen them all yet) have some good points, and some…let’s just call them unintended consequences. In every case it’s obvious that the authors’ intentions were good, but they needed some expert advice from people who actually understand the technical and legal realities of the internet today.
One such expert shares his review of one of those bills: S. 3742, the “Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2010.”