Twitter's Jack Dorsey confesses to criminal violation of CFAA on "60 Minutes" (sort of)

Firedoglake highlights the moment in Jack Dorsey's recent 60 Minutes profile at which the Twitter co-founder effectively copped to violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

According to some in the US gov, this makes the affable entrepreneur "a greater threat to America than Al-Qaeda."

JACK DORSEY: I found a way into the website, I found a security hole. And –

LARA LOGAN: Is that the same thing as hacking?

JACK DORSEY: It’s uh, yes.

As noted in recent Boing Boing posts, CFAA is the wrong-headed, hacker-panic law involved in the cases of both the late Aaron Swartz and Andrew “Weev” Aurenheimer, who just got 3 years in prison for exposing an AT&T security hole.

(HT: @DanSWright)

• [awjt]

  NerdSpeak FAIL here…

  “Is that the same thing as hacking?”
  “It’s uh, white hat hacking, yes.”

  • [joshhaglund]

    no, he’s correct. the adjective is subjective. the verb isn’t.

    the FAIL is turning hacking into a bad word. before hollywood movies, it wasn’t.

    • [awjt]

       What?  You totally missed my point then made the same point.  Gotta love the interwebs. 

      • [joshhaglund]

        your wright ;)
        i blame the government.

        • [awjt]

           Me too.  At least we agree on that!

• [Warren Grant]

  Obviously its now better to just ignore it if you find a major problem with the security of a website or computer service. Like the management of said site or service who are hoping that any such problems just “go away”.
  I hope someone does discover something like this, does fail to disclose it (perhaps a letter containing the problem to be mailed to the management/owner by a lawyer AFTER the exploit is discovered) and then when the glitch in question enables some malevolent entity to download, say the private medical information of 500000 citizens, it will be clear that it could have been fixed if they had been informed of it, but they weren’t because if you tell someone their website has a security hole YOU end up in jail. 
  This is complete BS. Shoot the messenger was supposed to be passe a century or two ago I thought. Evidently not. The Emperor has no security…

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Obviously its now better to just ignore it if you find a major problem with the security of a website or computer service.

    Don’t be such a Pollyana. Even if you ignore it, they’ll still track you down and prosecute you for having found it. They’ll just do it quietly so that you don’t get public support.

• [Boundegar]

  This is why you don’t confess your crimes until after you’re a billionaire.

• [Cleo]

  Saw the segment. The reporter’s grasp of technology was worse than my grandmother’s currently is. And my grandmother passed away some time ago.

• [oasisob1]

  “I call top bunk!”
  ~Weev