Fork The Law

Fork The Law is a nascent public interest organization originally founded to organize information to promote change in the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. While working on that, we realized that the ideas and processes we were putting together could be applied to any statutory change. The goal of the organization is to move from just talking about a problem to actively making steps to fix it. Executive Director Christie has been a network engineer, an anthropologist, and a security researcher and now studies law at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. Her unique experience embodies what we aim to achieve with this project in breaking down boundaries between the governed and the government, between computer and legal code. Technical Director Meredith co-founded the field of language-theoretic security with Len Sassaman and Sergey Bratus in 2010, and has been hard at work trying to fix the Internet since well before then. Alarmed by the idea that current interpretations of U.S. computer-crime laws could lead to the criminalization of research aimed at triaging and fixing software vulnerabilities, she asked herself what she could do to influence legislative reform. Fork the Law is her answer. Legal Director Cathy is a litigation attorney whose areas of focus include constitutional rights, government and law enforcement abuse, Internet freedom, and children's rights, particularly those associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. She is a former board member of the Asperger's Association of America and founder of One Child at a Time, a nonprofit organization providing assistance to families of children and young adults with special needs. She has initiated and participated in conferences and state and federal lobbying related to Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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