Sweeping Georgia cybercrime bill would target 'snoopers'

Here's the key tidbit:

unauthorized security experts exposed a vulnerability in the state's voting records

What seems to be really going on (although there's always room for doubt):

• Someone in the Government of Georgia was embarrassed by the fact that there was a vulnerability in the voting records

• That someone wants to retaliate against those who embarrassed him, but, oops, there's no law that lets him retaliate lawfully

• So his allies in the legislature have drafted a bill that will criminalize the actions of anyone who might embarrass him in future

This whole thing shows a total lack of understanding of the IT security field. Since malicious unauthorized access is unauthorized, sometimes well-intentioned unauthorized access also has to be unauthorized in order to expose vulnerabilities. That's just how things are. But pencil-pushers in government just don't want personal consequences from the natural progress of the IT security arms race with the bad guys, so they're prepared to have security holes go undiscovered by prohibiting the use of tools that could discover them. It's ignorant and shortsighted.

Another thing is that, when writing laws, you never just take someone's word that they won't abuse the wording of a law because they're a nice person. Lawyers will, and I mean guaranteed they will, use every loophole they possibly can to get their client what their client wants, regardless of the legal-layperson ethics of the situation. And if the law says something that is only a technicality the people writing the law never intended, then horrible injustice will be done to someone, someday, by someone who found a lawyer willing to represent them. That's guaranteed to happen because of how the practice of law works. So the people writing laws have to consider every possible way the wording of the law can be used to go against the spirit of the law. That's why legislatures have huge bureaucracies of specialists whose only job is to iron out kinks in the wording of laws. But those specialists can only iron out kinks if it's possible to iron them out. In this case it sounds like that wouldn't be possible, and bureaucrats are the last people to care about the consequences of that to ordinary citizens.

tl;dr this is horrible on several levels, not least the base cupidity of some petulant person in power who doesn't see past the end of his own nose.

Which is easier: fix a legitimate problem with a system which is widely known to have security holes, or draft legislation and sacrifice whatever is left of your integrity championing a law that prevents people from saying there is a problem?

If I learned anything from my 32 years in Georgia, it’s if you don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. Definitely preferable to shut people up than to fix a problem, especially if that problem (the lack of oversight over the Kennesaw voting system) can benefit you in an election.

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Hmm. I mean, I kinda get his reasoning... But maybe he might wanna possibly consider thinking about asking an expert in the field or a random 16 year old? Or explain it to him like with guns? "the overwhelming majority of people with computers are just minding their own business and will never do anything harmful. But some people with computers are bad guys, and do bad things. So to prevent the bad guys with computers from doing bad things, you need good guys with computers. Your government agencies also have computers, and they can do good things with them. But sometimes, a small percentage of agents do bad things with them. And even those that don't can't be everywhere all the time. And sometimes, they just don't know where to look. So, you need the good citizens with computers to help point the way. That's why it's a good idea to make good laws that punish the bad guys with computers, but a bad idea to restrict the good guys with computers ability to use them in good ways."