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[Sorry John, I meant to post this to the MSUNAG list, sadly "Reply" goes to the poster and not the list and sometimes I forget to manually change the recipient address. If you want to then post your reply to the list, I will add my reply to your reply.] At 7/2/2008 01:10 PM Wednesday, John Resotko wrote: >I kid you not, > ><http://www.ij.org/first_amendment/tx_computer_repair/6_26_08pr.html>http://www.ij.org/first_amendment/tx_computer_repair/6_26_08pr.html > > > From what I've read, the Texas law enacted in 2007 places fines and > criminal penalties for anyone working on a computer who conducts > "and investigation" on that computer without a valid Private > Investigator's license. Their definition of what constittutes an > investigation is so broad that common diagnostic tasks could fall > into the definition of an investigation. Not only is the repair > technician subject to fines and criminal penalties, but the > computer OWNER is also subject to the same charges for knowingly > using an unlicensed technician. I case anyone missed it, there was an update on this, you can see the Slashdot coverage at http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/09/2226252 , or go directly to the update at http://www.networkperformancedaily.com/2008/07/texas_law_requires_pi_licenses.html . It seems the operative wording is "the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the content of" computer data. That is, the law does not affect computer repair that merely makes data available to the customer. Rather, it only applies when someone *analyzes* the *content* for the *purpose* of finding out what sorts of mischief the user has been up to, i.e., it only affects those who do forensic analysis of computer data. So this story may have gotten a bit exaggerated. -- dkm