RedNova News: Tech Ignorance Leads to Wrong Conviction: "McDanel was convicted in a nonjury trial on June 25, 2002. His sentence of 16 months was the maximum at the time; the limit is now two years. 'What's happened here is you have this perfect storm of a vague statute, a kind of general ignorance about computers and computer security and a system where prosecutors get a lot of press and money for pursuing computer crime cases,' Granick said. For instance, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act bars anyone from sending information, with the intent to cause damage, to a protected computer. But the law's definition of damage includes 'impairment to integrity' of a system or data - a phrase so ambiguous that a judge in an unrelated 2000 case resorted to a dictionary for clarification. In McDanel's case, prosecutors claimed and the judge agreed that 'impairment to integrity' includes the publication of a security vulnerability. In other words, the conviction hinged on McDanel's message, not just his method. 'He let people know it was insecure,' said Granick, who is executive director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. 'And that required them to fix it and deal with angry customers - the theory being they didn't have to fix it as long as nobody knew about it.'"