Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC

Banned from the WebAuthor(s): Michael C. BoyerSource: Foreign Policy, No. 145 (Nov. - Dec., 2004), p. 93Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4152957 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:31

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Foreign Policy.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.156 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:31:22 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Banned From the Web

n 1995, a United States District Court in Texas sen- tenced Chris Lamprecht to 70 months in federal

prison for money laundering. Because Lamprecht was a known computer hacker, Judge Sam Sparks also banned him from "the Internet or any computer net-

work" after his release from prison-making Lamprecht the first American to be judicial- ly banned from the Internet.

Experts are unsure how many additional people have been booted off the Internet since Lamprecht's case, but the number is likely increas- ing as U.S. and foreign courts prosecute a grow- ing number of computer

crimes. In the last year, courts in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States have all banned people from the Internet. "The more cases, the more bans," says Jennifer Granick, a lawyer who has defended hackers and is executive director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. The U.S. Department of Justice disposed of 631 computer crime cases in 2001, up from 137 in 1995 (for a sampling, see www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/cccases.html).

Court-ordered computer or Internet bans are typi- cally imposed during "supervised release," normally a three- to five-year period after a convicted criminal serves jail time but is still under a probation officer's con- trol. If the bans sound hard to enforce, it's because they are. "I proved that," says Lamprecht, "as [I] vio- lated my ban almost every day for a year." The prob- lem, as Granick puts it, is that "most judges aren't very tech savvy." Neither are probation officers, apparent- ly. "One time," Lamprecht recalls, "my probation offi- cer even did a surprise check, came in my apartment and inspected my computer for a telephone cable or modem. He didn't find one. I was online...but I had broad- band and not a modem." Some courts are now tailor- ing Internet bans to specific online activities. For instance, a British pedophile recently became the first person there to be barred specifically from Internet chatrooms (for 10 years).

Granick and other lawyers have challenged Inter- net bans based on freedom of speech and additional

Klaus Muiller is an international museum consultant, writer, and filmmaker (www.kmlink.net). He has worked with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, London's Imperial War Museum, and other leading museums and human rights organizations.

virtualmuseum.ca Virtual Museum Canada is the world's most advanced online museum network, bringing together more than 1,000 Canadian museums. The Web site currently features 146 exhibitions on topics ranging from Russian landscape painting to indigenous North American sports, including lacrosse and the tradition of the sacred run.

h-net.org/- museum H-Net is a Michigan-based interdisciplinary organization of scholars and an essential source of information on museum developments worldwide. I use H-Museum, its museum studies network, which includes a moderated mailing list with more than 3,600 subscribers from 94 countries. It publishes a weekly news digest of articles on international museological topics in five languages.

archimuse.com Trends in online exhibitions and museum Web sites change rapidly. An easy way for me to stay up to date-and to find the world's best online museums-is the yearly "Best of the Web" competition organized by the Ontario-based consultancy Archives & Museum Informatics.

icom.museum Created in 1946, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) is an organization of museums and museum professionals. ICOM explores solutions to pressing museum issues-such as the looting of cultural artifacts-that cannot be solved at a regional or national level. For instance, ICOM maintains a list of stolen and at-risk artifacts at icom.museum/redlist.

constitutional rights. So far, they've failed. But Granick isn't too worried about the precedent these cases set for the future: "I predict that as judges begin to see that the computer isn't a novelty, but is an everyday apparatus like the telephone, we'll see a lot fewer computer-use restrictions." -Michael C. Boyer

Russ Oates is a graduate student at the University of Kentucky. Soyoung Ho is editorial assistant at the Washington Monthly. Michael C. Boyer is associate editor at FOREIGN POLICY.

NOVEMBER I DECEMBER 2004 93

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.156 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:31:22 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions