14 DAY TRIAL // On March 18, Andrew Auernheimer, also known as “Weev,” the man accused of hacking into the systems of AT&T and stealing the details of around 120,000 iPad owners, was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
On Monday, his legal team filed an appeal, arguing that the improper conviction and prison sentence is the result of a flawed prosecution theory under the controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
“The government set out to make an example of Auernheimer,” said Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney at the EFF, which joined Auernheimer’s legal team shortly after the sentencing.
“But the only message this sends to the security-research community is that if you discover a vulnerability, you could go to jail for sounding the alarm.”
Internet attorney and EFF fellow Marcia Hofmann notes that Weev was aggressively prosecuted for something that caused very little harm and, more importantly, something that was intended to be in the public interest.
“The CFAA's vague language gives prosecutors great latitude to abuse their discretion and throw the book at people they simply don't like. That's as evident here as it was in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz,” she commented.
“Anyone who cares about the free flow of information on the Internet should be concerned about this case,” one of Weev's trial lawyers, TOR Ekeland, said.
“The government is criminalizing computer behavior that millions of Americans engage in every day. The government's reckless and myopic prosecution of Auernheimer for obtaining public information from a public website endangers that vital aspect of the Internet and our national economy, which depends on the free flow of information.”
Now, it remains to be seen if the CFAA will be improved. On June 20, Aaron’s Law – a bill that aims at reforming the CFAA – was introduced in Congress.
Aaron’s Law comes in light of the suicide of Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, but Andrew Auernheimer’s case also highlights the fact that the act needs to be improved.