I Voted? How the Law Increasingly Restricts Independent Security Research

Are our elections secure? Can we trust our insurance companies' websites to secure our medical information? Can I get a free download from an online music store? These questions are increasingly being asked as more of our fundamental activities and commerce move online or to digital technologies. Computer security experts, both professional and amateur, recognize that the best way to make our vital systems secure, and keep them that way, is through an ongoing, scientific cycle of widespread testing, review, attacks, publication and continued system development. Yet the law has increasingly created barriers to this process. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trade secret law and copyright law, for instance, have all created barriers to independent computer security research into some of the most important systems used by the public today. Ms. Cohn will discuss the legal issues facing independent security researchers, using the struggle to test electronic voting machines among other examples.