On Apr 11, 2016, at 2:18 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
I could be wrong, IANAL, but I’d be surprised if a mere portscan would actually be treated as a violation for the reasons cited above.
Not that I've ever heard of someone being fined but you're definitely in to "something wrong" territory.
I don’t think you’ve made your case for “definite” so far. I agree you might be at risk from an overzealous prosecutor and an activist judge that hates hackers for some reason, but short of that, I think you’re unlikely to run afoul of this statute just on a port scan.
my experience in talking to the DoJ in the US is this is not going to illicit any sort of a response. I will say that the number of people who “set up a tool” to watch for activity then claim things like a DNS packet or backscatter from DDoS represent a log-on attempt generates the most amusing email to read. - Jared