dc0de has posted a what-if scenario which may pose a very serious problem with this bill. Are there any lawyers paying attention who can comment on this?

Here's a what if scenario if the GA HR 1259 get's passed...

1. I am asked to go to a friends house to look at something odd on his VPN connnection.

2. I discover that he is witnessing someone steal Intellectual property from the company HE works for.

3. He turns the thief into the his company, and explains that I identified the network traffic that brought this to their attention.

4. They take the thief to court, and I am called as a witness.

5. I am asked what I did to identify the traffic, and at this point, I'm in a Catch22.

Do I explain what I did and risk being charged with a FELONY as having performing forensics without a P.I. license?

-Or-

Do I plead the 5th Ammendment, and allow the thief to go free?

Also, what if I am "compelled" to give my testimony? What if the company makes a sworn statement that I was the one that helped identify the thief? Wouldn't I still be liable for performing forensics without a license?

Wow...I can't even HELP people anymore?

Now that's messed up.

dc0de wrote:
Here's a what if scenario if the GA HR 1259 get's passed...

I like that. Here is another, actually a comparison of scenarios:

Scenario 1.
I own a major website.
Someone hacks in to my website and installs malware on my machine used to run distributed denial of service attacks.
I call an expert who does the following:
Backup the machine.
Clean up the malware.
Patch vulnerabilities.
Get me up and running again.

It seems clear to me that this is computer forensics and requires a license. That backup is evidence of a computer crime, and so is the work the expert did to figure out what changes were made to the machine so that they could be cleaned up and the vulnerabilities could be repaired.

So, accepting that, consider:

Scenario 2.
I own a desktop PC. I have a cable modem and no firewall. I am not very good at computers.
Someone hacks in to my computer and installs malware on my machine used to run distributed denial of service attacks.
I call an expert who does the following:
Backup the machine.
Clean up the malware.
Patch vulnerabilities.
Get me up and running again.

The difference? The "expert" I likely called was the GeekSquad or CompUSA. Do those people need to be licensed private investigators!?