In a stinging critique Tuesday, Feinstein said the CIA search and Eatinger's referral may have violated the Constitution, a federal computer fraud statute and a prohibition against CIA domestic surveillance.
But the Pentagon directive and the amendment did not ban the use of compact-disc devices, which are built into many computers and therefore not included in the prohibition against the use of external memory devices.
As another example of the gun data ban, the Bureau of Alcohol , Tobacco Firearms, and Explosives has been forbidden for some time now to use computers for its crime gun traces, a prohibition which is simultaneously arbitrary, senseless, and deadly.
The unnoticed rewriting of a key clause of the Computer Misuse Act has exempted law enforcement officials from the prohibition on breaking into other people's laptops, databases, mobile phones or digital systems.
In its filing on Monday, the Justice Department is certain to oppose most of the substantive changes, like Microsoft's proposal to delete the prohibition on continuing to offer special marketing deals to certain computer manufacturers.
Internet restrictions such as a prohibition on access to email have been imposed on offenders who made their threats by computer.
The museum has suspended its prohibition of photography and let Mr. Arcangel boost cellphone reception and introduce Wi-Fi for computers, whose uses are normally verboten.
Later, with the hindsight of history and computer input, sacrificing the queen appears to have been the strongest move anyway, despite the obvious cognitive and symbolic prohibition against giving up your most powerful piece for seemingly nothing.
The obvious target for the antiliberties crowd is the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable or warrantless searches, which covers everything from a pat-down to a wiretap on a computer.
