DOJ: Lying on Match.com needs to be a crime

[Newsjock]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57324779-281/doj-lying-on-match.com-needs-to-be-a-crime/

The U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com.

In a statement obtained by CNET that's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow (Tuesday), the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies.

The law must allow "prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider," Richard Downing, the Justice Department's deputy computer crime chief, will tell the U.S. Congress tomorrow.

... Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor who's now a professor of law at George Washington University, ... gives other examples of terms of service violations that would become criminal. Google says you can't use its services if "you are not of legal age to form a binding contract," which implies that millions of teenagers would be unindicted criminals. Match.com, meanwhile, says you can't lie about your age, criminalizing the profile of anyone not a model of probity.

[saras]

1. YES! THIS IS THE ONE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM IN THE WORLD FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE!

It makes everything else they might possibly do look trivial in comparison.

[gratuitous]

2. Damn right

Some fat choad on match.com says he weighs only 240 when he's really closer to 300? Let's make a federal case out of this! War crimes can wait, and besides, we don't want to spend all our time lookin' backwards to the past, and criminalizing political disagreements over just what is and what is not torture. Never mind that - some dude says he's nearly six feet tall, but from the photo, it's clear he's only 5-7, 5-8 at best. Release the hounds of investigation.

[christx30]

8. Yup.

They should look into something like that, rather than, say, a government department selling automatic weapons to powerful crime syndicates.

[AngryAmish]

7. It is a serious issue

When everything is a crime it gives the prosecutor too much damn power.

[OhioChick]

3. Don't they have more pressing concerns?

:eyes:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

4. They want to legally enforce websites' TOS?

Do they know that most of those only threaten to revoke your right to use the site/service if you break them?

[HipChick]

5. FFS...

[myrna minx]

6. I'll sleep well tonight knowing the DOJ is on the case.

What a pointless AG. Wow.

[Modern_Matthew]

9. Someone at the DOJ must be butt hurt. nt

[woo me with science]

10. Actually, this IS a pressing concern for them

and is far more sinister than it appears from the headline.

They don't want anonymity or red herrings on the internet. It is how they track and monitor Americans. And they want a vastly broadened range of legal options for bringing criminal charges against US citizens.

This should alarm all of us. It is one more step toward what is increasingly looking like a goal of fascism.

[a simple pattern]

11. Lying about credit default swaps still ok