It’s stories like this one, about a computer tech at DeKalb Tech in GA who was fired and is facing criminal prosecution for running distributed.net on school computers, that are making me really think about joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More and more often, it seems like poorly designed, vaguely worded legislation intended to prevent actual computer crime is being wrongfully applied by prosecutors who seem to be woefully unaware of the issues and concerns involving computer security and even computers in general. This case is of particular interest to me because, *shhhh* I’ve run the exact same program myself on several computers belonging to the Ohio State University. Did the guy deserve to get fired? Probably so, if in fact he had been previously warned that installing such programs was against university policy (the dubious merits of such a policy not withstanding) Criminal prosecution? Not even close.