The case against Lori Drew has been dismissed (more or less) by the federal judge who was hearing the case. This counts as very good news…but not exactly wonderful news.
For those not following the case, Lori Drew used MySpace email to play a cruel trick on a teenage girl named Megan Meier, who killed herself. Prosecutors in Drew’s home state of Missouri didn’t prosecute her for this, probably (I’m guessing) because saying mean things to little girls isn’t a criminal act.
That didn’t stop grandstanding U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien from stepping in. Even though he was located 1500 miles away in the Central District of California, he used the fact that MySpace’s computers were located in California to charge Drew with computer fraud because she violated MySpace’s Terms and Conditions when she used fake information to setup her account.
In other words, he didn’t prosecute Lori Drew for what she did to Megan Meier, he prosecuted her for what she did to MySpace.
That’s a horrifying precedent. Millions of Americans provide false information to web sites, sometimes to be sneaky, sometimes to preserve their privacy, and sometimes just out of vanity. This interpretation of the law makes criminals of them all.
As the judge put it:
“Is a misdemeanor committed by the conduct which is done every single day by millions and millions of people?” Wu asked. “If these people do read [the terms of service] and still say they’re 40 when they are 45, is that a misdemeanor?”
Some people have tried to defend this interpretation by pointing out that federal prosecutors just wanted to punish Lori Drew. They aren’t about to file charges against millions of Americans. Of course not. I’m not worried about them filing charges against millions of Americans. What does scare me, however, is the thought of federal prosecutors having the ability to file charges, at any time, against any one of several million Americans.
This time they filed charges against Lori Drew, who, in the grand scheme of things, deserved a crapload of grief. But who would have been next? Someone else who did an awful thing that couldn’t be prosecuted any other way? Or perhaps just someone who pissed off a prosecutor. It’s not hard to imagine O’Brien or some other self-important federal prosecutor (I’m lookin’ at you, Mary Beth Buchanan!) going after some of their detractors for giving false information when they signed up for a blogging account.
Fortunately, Judge Wu is dismissing the case, and he’s dismissing it not on the facts or on some procedural error, but because he doesn’t think the computer fraud statutes apply so broadly. This gives all of us cause to breath a little easier.
(Hat tip: Ken)
Update: I have edited this post to emphasize the prosecutor’s grandstanding, as suggested by Ken in his comment below.
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