Internet activist Aaron Swartz’s suicide last January galvanized calls for an overhaul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), used widely by the government to prosecute misdeeds that critics say the law was never intended to address. Yet, one year after Swartz’s death, efforts to reform the law appear to have made little headway.
Aaron’s Law, a bill that would have put important new restrictions on use of the CFAA by federal prosecutors stalled in Congress last year despite eliciting wide support from privacy and rights advocacy groups. The bill was sent to the House Judiciary Committee’s Crime Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations subcommittee in June where it languished…
