> 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 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.