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Comment by rbehrends | Hacker News Reader

I think you don't understand that Orin Kerr is a long-time critic of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (or at least, how broadly some of its provisions are interpreted) [1,2]. Also, he's not associated with the DoJ.

[1] http://www.volokh.com/2011/11/14/my-congressional-testimony-...

[2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=399740

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He is. And he certainly says that a lot.

But whenever I read him at the Volokh Conspiracy, inevitably he seems to come down on the other side.

Check out some of his GPS / 4th Amendment analyses. For a guy that claims to be a civil libertarian and for a guy that claims to understand tech, he sure comes down awfully frequently on more expansive powers for search and seizure and miss the obvious civil liberties and technology issues.

And no, I can't point to anything specific, but it is my general sense of the guy after reading what he writes at the VC for a couple of years now. And I appreciate what he writes, and it can be very illuminating to me as a non-lawyer, but I have often been struck by how much this critic of CFAA and civil libertarian isn't.

"From 1998 to 2001, he was employed as an Honors Program trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orin_Kerr

That was over a decade ago. His salary, as you put it, does not depend on the DoJ.

Not the point. You had claimed he wasn't associated with the DoJ.

He got the GW Law gig, in part, because of his prosecutorial duties at DoJ. So his salary does somewhat depend on his not understanding that the problem was the DoJ, not Aaron.

No, he said he's not associated with the DoJ. Not that he had previous associations with the DoJ.

Three years in the belly of the beast is enough to make one a lifer. In reading his work, it's quite obvious that his sympathies are with the power of his former employer, not with the rights of the individual.

It's a hazard of going corporate: Corporate becomes more important than people.

I understand your suspicion, but don't focus on the man, argue his points.

While true, AFAIK, Orin was essentially responsible for writing the manuals the DOJ currently uses to decide on how/when/what to charge in CFAA cases.

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