Tech Week In Review: Ransomware Attacks, Federal Hacking Law, Rural Broadband and More

SCOTUS Narrows Scope of Federal Hacking Law:

The U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the reach of the 34-year-old federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act last week, ruling that it is not a violation of that law for someone who is authorized to access a computer system to do so for an inappropriate reason.

The decision came in connection with a case involving a former Georgia police sergeant who agreed to look up a driver’s license record in exchange for money.

By a 6-3 vote, with conservative justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined by liberals Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the court decided that the law only applied to those who accessed areas of a computer system that they don’t have authorization to access.

Reading the law any other way, the justices said, would “attach criminal penalties to a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity.”

Mark Rasch, a former computer crimes prosecutor for the Justice Department, said the Georgia police sergeant “could have been charged with other crimes, such as embezzlement or theft,” but he wasn’t guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

“This law was aimed at hacking, and what the police officer did wasn’t hacking,” he said. (NBC NEWS)

FL Bans ‘Deplatforming’ of Political Candidates:

Two internet interest lobbying associations that partner with Big Tech companies like Twitter and Google filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday in opposition to a new Florida law that prohibits social media companies from “de-platforming” political candidates for more than 14 days. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed first-in-the-nation legislation (SB 7072) last month. Under the law, companies that violate the ban would be subject to fines of $250,000 a day for candidates for statewide office and $25,000 a day for candidates for other offices.

DeSantis praised the bill as a way of striking back against “Silicon Valley elites,” who he says have been censoring conservative voices.

“What we’ve been seeing across the U.S. is an effort to silence, intimidate and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations,” he said in a statement. (NBC NEWS, BBC, STATE NET, FLORIDA POLITICS)

Tech in Brief

Ransomware Attack Disrupts U.S. Meat Processing:

Brazil-based JBS SA, the world’s largest meat processor, suffered a ransomware attack, believed to be the work of a hacker group tied to Russia, that disrupted the company’s operations in the United States and Australia. The JBS attack comes just weeks after hackers targeted Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of one of the largest gas pipelines in the United States, highlighting the vulnerability of the nation’s critical infrastructure. (CNET, CNBC)

DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Settle with AZ over Waiving of Delivery Fees for Black-Owned Restaurants:

The Arizona attorney general’s office has reached a settlement with DoorDash, Postmates and Uber over their waiving of delivery fees for Black-owned restaurants during the pandemic. Although the companies said they did so to help communities of color that were disproportionately impacted by last year’s economic crisis, the AG office’s civil rights division said the waiving of the delivery fees constituted discrimination against non-Black-owned restaurants. (CNET)

Ring Changing Process for Public Agency Video Requests:

Starting this month public agencies, including law enforcement, will no longer be able to request video footage directly from Ring camera owners in the company’s Neighbors app but will instead have to make those requests through public posts in the app’s main feed. Ring, which is owned by apple, said it was making the change to provide greater transparency about such requests. (VERGE)

Microsoft Expanding Rural Broadband Access Effort to Digitally Divided Cities:

Microsoft announced last week that is expanding its Airband Initiative, launched in 2017 to improve access to broadband in rural America, to eight “U.S. cities that face some of the largest broadband gaps among racial and ethnic minorities, specifically Black and African American communities.” The cities are Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Memphis, Milwaukee and New York City. (MICROSOFT)

-- Compiled by KOREY CLARK