1. John McDanel was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The section of the act he was charged with violating makes it a crime to transmit code, programs, or information with the intent to cause damage to a protected computer. The statute is usually interpreted to cover malicious code like computer viruses. The government charged that McDanel had sent so many emails (5,000 in a 5-day period) to his former employer that it crashed its system. McDanel argued that he was trying to force his employer to deal with a security hole in its software. McDanel was sentenced to 16 months in prison. However, after completing his sentence, the government decided that his prosecution was a mistake and moved to vacate (set aside) his conviction. The government, in presenting its motion to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, argued that the law was so vague that the statute itself should be ruled unconstitutional. They further argued that the definition of “unauthorized access,” defined as “intentionally access[ing] a computer without authorization” was so broad that it could be interpreted as any interaction between two computers. That, they argued, made it too easy to convict a person under the statute. Why do you think the government made this unusual move to vacate the sentence of McDanel? What are some of the problems with the statute that made the government say it was unconstitutional? [U. S. v. McDanel, 9th Cir. No. 03-50135, 10/16/03]