Syllabus

Welcome

In this course, each voice in the classroom has something of value to contribute. Please take care to respect the different experiences, beliefs and values expressed by students and staff involved in this course. My colleagues and I support UMass’s commitment to diversity, and welcome individuals regardless of age, background, citizenship, disability, sex, education, ethnicity, family status, gender, gender identity, geographical origin, language, military experience, political views, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and work experience.

View this syllabus as a guide to the course. It provides important information regarding the course, its assignments, policies, grading, and available university resources. You should refer to it regularly. However, this document should be considered a working document. It is possible throughout the semester that a topic may take more time than expected, topics or assignments may change, or a class may be canceled due to a snow day or another emergency. If that is the case, the syllabus will be updated and a revised version will be posted on the course web site.

Course overview

COMPSCI 391L is a study, analysis, and discussion of the legal issues related to crimes involving computers and networks, including topical actions by dissidents and governments. We will also study the technologies of forensic investigation, intelligence gathering, privacy enhancement, and censorship resistance. Prerequisites: COMPSCI 230 and ENGLWRIT 112 (or waiver for it).

Our main legal topics will include recent and important case law, statutes, and constitutional clauses concerning authorization, access, search and seizure, wiretaps, the right to privacy, and FISA. Our technology topics will include methods of investigation and resistance in the context of the Internet and Cellular networks. Students are assumed to have no background in legal concepts. All students will be required to complete substantial legal readings, complete significant written analysis of rulings, learn about technologies in detail, and participate in lively class discussion.

Some of the laws and cases that we’ll be covering provide the courts’ answers to these questions:

Can you be compelled by police to turn over the key to encrypted documents?
Are you breaking the law if you connect to someone’s open wireless access point?
Does violating a web site’s Terms of Service constitute criminal fraud?
If you tell your employer you are leaving in two weeks, are you guilty of hacking if you then access your files at the company?
Since data can be deleted immediately via remote commands, aren’t police always justified in seizing equipment without a warrant to avoid the delay?
What is the legal justification for the surveillance activities of the US government?
Why do we have a right to “privacy” if the word never appears in the constitution?

These issues and the others we’ll discuss are fundamental to our profession and our society.

Some of the technical topics that we’ll cover include:

What information does one expose to third parties from everyday use of cellular phones and why?
What information can a third party (e.g., advertisers or the government) gather about persons from their use of the Internet and why?
How do technologies for protecting privacy, such as Tor, operate?
What technologies are available for investigating crimes perpetrated with the help the Internet, including child exploitation, human trafficking, and electronic theft, and how do they work?
What technologies are available to thwart government censorship and how do they work?

The specific objectives for the course are as follows:

To gain an understanding of and familiarity with computer crime case law and general legal reasoning.
To understand the implications that computer science advances have had on criminal law historically.
To reason about the implications of current and future computer science advances on hypothetical cases, based on past rulings.
To gain a familiarity and understanding of the technology that supports privacy and surveillance.
To gain experience in formal writing, and experience in making well-reasoned arguments both on paper and in class discussion.

What, when, where, who

COMPSCI 391L: Computer Crime Law
TuTh 1–2:15pm
LGRC A203

Instructor: Marc Liberatore (please call me “Marc”)
Email: liberato@cs.umass.edu
Phone: 413-545-3061 (on campus: 5-3061)
Office: Computer Science Building, room 318
Office hours: Thursday, 9:30–11:30

Required material

There is one required textbook for this class from which many readings will be assigned: Orin Kerr’s Computer Crime Law, 4th edition.

There is one optional textbook: Learning Legal Reasoning: Briefing, Analysis and Theory by John Delaney (ISBN-10: 0960851445). Chapter one is available online for free on the author’s web site. We will cover the content from chapter two in class, though you may prefer to purchase and read the author’s version.

Other readings will be made available electronically on this web site or on the course Moodle site.

Communication policy

Per the University Email Policy, you are expected to check your email regularly. I will use your UMass email address as your point of contact in all online tools we use (notably, Moodle) and as my primary means to contact you individually outside of class.

If you send the course staff email, please include “COMPSCI 391L” in the subject line to make sure we answer them in a timely fashion. Please check the syllabus and course web site before emailing the course staff.

Course staff typically respond to emails within about one business day, but I (Marc) do not typically respond to communications after about 5pm or on weekends. Course staff tend to get a high volume of email when a deadline is approaching. If you contact us at least one full business day before a deadline, you are guaranteed a reply before the exam or deadline. Otherwise we’ll do our best, but no guarantees.

Time management and what to expect

As a general guideline, the university suggests that students spend an additional two to three hours outside of class time per credit hour. This is a three credit course, therefore you should plan to spend six to nine hours a week on this class outside of lecture.

In a typical week, you will attend two lectures and complete the assigned reading, case briefs, and questions before each lecture. The bulk of your time will be spent reading and briefing cases, as will be explained in the first lecture.

Technology in the classroom

At the start of the semester, I will permit laptops and the like in the classroom. If it becomes clear that they are being used for purposes not directly related to the class, I will ban them. It is unfair to distract other students with Facebook feeds, animated ads, and the like.

Regardless, I recommend taking notes by hand. Research suggests that students who take written notes in class significantly outperform students who use electronic devices to take notes.

Attendance

I expect you to attend lecture and exams.

If you will be absent (either from class, or from an exam) due to religious reasons, you must provide me with a written list of such dates within one week of your enrollment in the course.
If you will be absent for a University-related event, such as an athletic event, field trip, or performance, you must notify me as soon as possible.
If you are absent for health reasons, I expect you to notify me as soon as possible and provide written documentation.
If you are absent for other extenuating non-academic reasons, such as a military obligation, family illness, jury duty, automobile collision, etc., I expect you to notify me as soon as possible and provide written documentation.

If you must miss anexam for an excusable reason, I will work with you to find an acceptable time for you to take a makeup. If you miss an exam without prior notice, I will require an explanation and clear written documentation in order to judge whether the absence is excusable. Exams must be made up within a week unless there are documented exceptional circumstances (such as a hospitalization or extended jury duty).

Similarly, if you miss a class without prior notice, I will require an explanation and written documentation in order to judge whether the absence is excusable.

Incompletes

Incompletes will be granted only in exceptional cases, and only if you have completed at least half the course with a passing grade. Prior to that, withdrawal is the recommended course of action.

Schedule

Please see the course web site for a class-by-class schedule.

Week 1: Overview, briefing, Katz test
Week 2: Computer misuse crimes
Week 3, 4, 5: 4th amendment
Week 6 & 7: TOR, NITs
Week 8 & 9: Statutory privacy protections
Week 10: Cellular network
Week 11: FISA and national security
Week 12: GPS and remote monitoring
Week 13: Review and wrap-up

Final Exam: 12/20/2018
Thursday
10:30–12:30
LGRC A203

Grading

The relative value of the various course components is approximately as follows:

60% written assignments
30% exams (in-class midterms and final)
10% attendance and participation

Final letter grades will be norm-referenced, influenced strongly by the performance of students this term, with the distribution of grades of previous students as a foundation.

There are no opportunities for extra credit in this course.

Late work will not be accepted. If you need an extension for an assignment, contact me a reasonable amount of time — generally, at least a full business day — before the assignment is due. If you are incapacitated for one or more days up to and including the due date, I will require written documentation explaining your inability to work on course material in order to consider granting a retroactive extension, at my discretion.

I will retain all graded materials for this course until the end of next semester. If you wish to review them, please come to see me during office hours (or make an appointment).

You are responsible for monitoring your grades. Grades will be available through Moodle and you should check them regularly and review any provided feedback. If you encounter any issues with your grades, you will have one week past the first posting of a particular assignment’s grade to Moodle to contact the course staff so that we can investigate. We will not generally accept questions about an individual assignment’s grade beyond this one week, so you must be prompt.

Case briefs, technical homeworks, and quizzes

Some of our assignments will be based on cases, for which you’ll write briefs, and some of our assignments will be based on technical material, for which you’ll answer questions.

For every case or technical article we cover, you will be expected to write a brief. COMPSCI 391L uses a form of flipped teaching: assignments are due before the class meeting in which they are first discussed. As described in class and in the text by Delaney, briefs are a short summary and description of a legal decision, following a particular format. Your briefs will be graded according to a rubric. We will weight all briefs equally. Expect to brief about four cases per week.

Assignments may also include responses to “notes” that appear at the end of each section of Kerr, newspaper articles, technical papers, and legal documents outside of Kerr. Note responses are not as tightly constrained in format as briefs, though we expect most note assignments can be written in one page or less. Like briefs, we will grade note responses according to a rubric. Expect to write one or two note responses per week. Even if we do not assign a note response, you should read the notes themselves carefully. Some are not hypotheticals but instead important commentary and information from Kerr. And all notes are fair game for exam questions. Similarly, we may ask for a response to a relevant blog post, and grade it as a note response.

We will use Moodle exclusively to accept assignments, which must be in the form of a PDF (no word, text, or other formats), with your name clearly visible. Assignments are due at 1:00pm on the due date. We will not accept assignments after this time, and we will assign a score of zero for work that is not submitted by this time (or at all).

There are no announced quizzes. I reserve the right to give unannounced quizzes if class participation is low or of low quality, though I’ve never had to do this. (I’ll announce when unannounced quizzes are a possibility.) If I do end up giving quizzes, they will be incorporated into your assignment grade, each weighted about as much as one assignment.

Each assignment and quiz will be worth a certain number of points – that is, they are not equally weighted. Your grade will be the sum of all points earned over all points assigned. See the grading rubric documents.

Exams

There will be two midterm exams and a final exam. Each will be weighted equally. The midterms will be given in class and announced in advance. The exams are, by nature of the course material, cumulative, though they will focus mainly on the most recent material. Exams will cover the textbook (Kerr) as well as all materials/articles/PDFs on the required reading list.

You may bring your own hand-typed/written notes and graded briefs to the exam. No other material is permitted. You may not include wholesale excerpts from the text in these briefs and notes. I will audit whatever material you bring to the exam, which should take less than five minutes per student. (Hint: Take notes when we review the answers to homework each class. I won’t be providing an answer key.)

Your overall exam grade must be above the passing threshold in order to pass the class.

Class participation

We will assign this portion of your grade on the basis of your presence and participation in class. Obviously, we expect you to attend class. Further, we expect you to participate in class discussion, posing and answering questions as appropriate.

We will assign grades of only full, half, or no credit for class participation. You may ask at any time what we currently estimate your class participation grade to be.

Academic honesty

General academic honesty statement

Since the integrity of the academic enterprise of any institution of higher education requires honesty in scholarship and research, academic honesty is required of all students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Academic dishonesty is prohibited in all programs of the University. Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to: cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, and facilitating dishonesty. Appropriate sanctions may be imposed on any student who has committed an act of academic dishonesty. Instructors should take reasonable steps to address academic misconduct. Any person who has reason to believe that a student has committed academic dishonesty should bring such information to the attention of the appropriate course instructor as soon as possible. Instances of academic dishonesty not related to a specific course should be brought to the attention of the appropriate department Head or Chair. Since students are expected to be familiar with this policy and the commonly accepted standards of academic integrity, ignorance of such standards is not normally sufficient evidence of lack of intent.

In addition, you should read the UMass Academic Honesty Policy (ignorance of the policy is no excuse).

Course-specific academic honesty information

Cheating is usually the result of other problems in school. Please come see the course staff if you are unable to keep up with the work for any reason and we will work something out. We want to see you succeed and will do everything we can to help you out!

You may discuss material with others, but your writing must be your own. When in doubt, contact the instructor about whether a potential action would be considered plagiarism. When discussing problems with others, do not show any of your written or programmed solutions to others. When asking others for help, do not take notes about the solution other than to jot down publicly available references. Use only verbal communication.

If you do discuss material with anyone besides the instructors, acknowledge your collaborators in each write-up. If you obtain a key insight with help (for example, through library work or a friend), acknowledge your source, briefly state the insight, and write up the solution on your own. In a fair fraction of your write-ups, I expect to see citations (though you need not cite the course texts).

Never misrepresent someone’s work as your own. It must be absolutely clear what material is your original work. You MUST cite all your sources properly. You must remove any possibility of someone else’s work from being misconstrued as yours. Also note that the facilitation of plagiarism (giving your work to someone else) is academic dishonesty as well.

Do not provide your solutions to others, either directly or via some sort of public posting. Doing so is a violation of the University Honesty Policy’s prohibition against facilitating academic dishonesty.

Plagiarism and other anti-intellectual behavior will be dealt with severely. If you engage in academic dishonesty, you will almost certainly receive an F for the course. Further, if there are formal disciplinary proceedings, I will lobby for the maximum possible penalty. Investigating plagiarism is a pleasant experience for neither instructor nor student. Please help us by avoiding any questionable behavior.

As a condition of continued enrollment in this course, you agree to submit all assignments to the Turn It In for textual comparison or originality review for the detection of possible plagiarism. All submitted assignments will be included in the UMass Amherst dedicated database of assignments at Turn It In and will be used solely for the purpose of checking for possible plagiarism during the grading process and during this term and in the future.

Other academic regulations

The Office of the Registrar publishes Academic Regulations yearly. You should be familiar with them. Particularly relevant are the policies on attendance, absences due to religious observance, and examinations.

Offensive topics and material

This class will often include discussion of real-life court cases and criminal scenarios. You may find some topics of discussion distasteful, offensive, disturbing, and shocking, which is atypical for Computer Science. For example, we will openly discuss true and hypothetical scenarios and cases of child sexual exploitation, adult pornography, homicide, and other violent crimes. You are welcome to sit out for any discussion if you feel uncomfortable, no questions asked, no need to ask ahead of time. We will try to keep all discussions at a high level and to avoid lurid details, and you should do the same. But it is inevitable that there will be some frankness in discussion as well as in candid court decisions you will read.

A word about copyrights

Some of the material (lecture notes, lectures, assignments, and so on) in this course is original work created by the instructor (Marc Liberatore); exceptions are clearly noted. Obviously, I don’t write court decisions, and I did not author our textbook, and so on. While you are welcome to use the material for your own personal and educational use, you may not redistribute them to others outside the class. In particular, selling or otherwise redistributing your notes, and making or selling audio, video, or still recordings of course material, is not allowed without express written permission from me.

I make this stuff available on the web for you to use easily and without the hassle of sign-ups, logins, and the like, not for you to abuse for a buck. As Carol Barr (Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Education) and Enku Gelaye (Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life) noted at the start of the Fall 2018 semester, usage of notes or in-class recordings without the faculty member’s permission is a violation of the faculty member’s copyright protection.

Accommodation statement

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is committed to providing an equal educational opportunity for all students. If you have a documented physical, psychological, or learning disability on file with Disability Services (DS), you may be eligible for reasonable academic accommodations to help you succeed in this course. If you have a documented disability that requires an accommodation, please notify me within the first two weeks of the semester so that we may make appropriate arrangements.