Appeals court reverses hacker/troll “weev” conviction and sentence
Source: ARS Technica
A federal appeals court Friday reversed and vacated the conviction and sentence of hacker and Internet troll Andrew "weev" Auernheimer.
The case against Auernheimer, who has often been in solitary confinement for obtaining and disclosing personal data of about 140,000 iPad owners from a publicly available AT&T website, was seen as a test case on how far the authorities could go under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the same law that federal prosecutors were invoking against Aaron Swartz.
But in the end, the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals didn't squarely address the controversial fraud law and instead said Auernheimer was charged in the wrong federal court.
"Although this appeal raises a number of complex and novel issues that are of great public importance in our increasingly interconnected age, we find it necessary to reach only one that has been fundamental since our country’s founding: venue," the appeals court wrote. "The proper place of colonial trials was so important to the founding generation that it was listed as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence" (PDF).
Read more: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/appeals-court-reverses-hackertroll-weev-conviction-and-sentence/
Version of the story from The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/11/andrew-auernheimers-weev-conviction-vacated-hacking
= new reply since forum marked as read
