The prosecution claimed that using wget was an unauthorized access under the cfaa because, direct quote I wrote down, Manning was: "only allowed to view one document at a time using a web browser."
To emphasize how scary hackerish wget was, they said that someone: "could not see wget from five feet away. It is a command-line program...it can run in the background."
To talk about how Manning was clearly a hacker, they explained how he:
* "used wget to create functionality that did not exist";
* "had to program wget—wget did not have a GUI, therefore it was not as simple as double-clicking"
* "had to research how to program wget" (by which they meant forensic evidence that he had consulted the wget man page!!)
They also mentioned that there was forensic evidence he had searched google for "computer programming".
That's just wget. In addition, they claimed that writing a VBA macro in Excel to bulk download contact info from Outlook was also a CFAA violation, because Outlook didn't offer a mass export function, so writing a VBA macro (in another part of the Office suite!) was a CFAA violation.
Yeah, scary stuff. Manning was convicted of the CFAA charge by the judge.
> But as a military soldier they could almost as easily have charged him with simply downloading information without authorization, wget or not.
They did charge him with various "mis-use of classified information" violations -- he pled guilty to most of them. The CFAA charge was an additional charge, carrying additional potential jail time, and it's one of the ones he was fighting in court (others he pled guilty to).
That's why they were 'bothering with wget', specifically to try and prove the CFAA charge (which he was convicted of) -- it was specifically about 'authorization' under the CFAA, not about COs permission under any rules or regulations related to classified information.
And regardless of what you think of Manning, it's the CFAA stuff that's scary for the rest of us computer programmers.
Yeah, I can definitely see where you're coming from here. This particular charge might even be a better poster child for CFAA reform than Swartz or weev's cases, since in Manning's case this is essentially a wide-area LAN access and not going to an external third-party's network. (edited WLAN to be what I meant)
I think Manning's case is definitely a better example for CFAA reform than Swartz's or Weev's. With Swartz, MIT intended to kick him off the network. With Weev, AT&T intended, poorly, to keep that data secret. But with Manning, there was no attempt o keep that data from Manning. He had access to it.
They'd basically be using an expert to testify that doing something didn't require said expert. Like having an auto mechanic testify that changing your oil is dead simple.
I mean, it is probably possible to convincingly make that case, but it seems a bit tricky.
I'd think it would be more akin to getting an astrophysicist to testify that "F = ma" is something taught in an introductory physics class and isn't indicative of someone being an expert.
just shows how stupid the judge is. Or that the US Courts are not this independent from the Executive branch after all. Just rubber stamping Big Gov demands.
The prosecution claimed that using wget was an unauthorized access under the cfaa because, direct quote I wrote down, Manning was: "only allowed to view one document at a time using a web browser."
To emphasize how scary hackerish wget was, they said that someone: "could not see wget from five feet away. It is a command-line program...it can run in the background."
To talk about how Manning was clearly a hacker, they explained how he:
* "used wget to create functionality that did not exist";
* "had to program wget—wget did not have a GUI, therefore it was not as simple as double-clicking"
* "had to research how to program wget" (by which they meant forensic evidence that he had consulted the wget man page!!)
They also mentioned that there was forensic evidence he had searched google for "computer programming".
That's just wget. In addition, they claimed that writing a VBA macro in Excel to bulk download contact info from Outlook was also a CFAA violation, because Outlook didn't offer a mass export function, so writing a VBA macro (in another part of the Office suite!) was a CFAA violation.
Yeah, scary stuff. Manning was convicted of the CFAA charge by the judge.