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Should Faking a Name on Facebook Be a Felony?

Posted on September 15, 2011July 2, 2025 by Dissent

Orin Kerr has a compelling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about proposed amendments to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that begins:

Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site. Or you could be sent to federal prison if your boss told you to work but you used the company’s computer to check sports scores online. Imagine that Eric Holder’s Justice Department urged Congress to raise penalties for violations, making them felonies allowing three years in jail for each broken promise. Fanciful, right?

Think again. Congress is now poised to grant the Obama administration’s wishes in the name of “cybersecurity.”

Read more on Wall Street Journal.

N.B. On The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin acknowledges a mistake in his piece, which I mention here simply in the interests of accuracy:

Via e-mail, a reader points out that I misdescribed one case near the end of the op-ed. The Ticketmaster case I mentioned involved alleged unauthorized access beyond the TOS violations. My apologies for the error, which was entirely mine.

 

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