The Texas outlaw
By Charles Miller

Recently, a friend startled me by asking if I was prepared to spend the next several years in prison. It seems that, under the 2007 Texas Occupations Code (H.B.2833) passed by the state legislature, I am now a lawbreaker along with probably 99.9 percent of the computer technicians in Texas. Violations of the law are punishable by a year in prison and a US$4,000 fine.

I went to the internet to check this out and found to my amazement that my friend was right. The same law goes further, allowing civil penalties of US$10,000 for examining computer files (such as diagnosing problems, then explaining to customers why their computer troubles occurred).

To work on a computer in Texas, a computer tech must now hold a private investigator’s license from the Texas Private Security Bureau (TPSB) earned after several years of study and apprenticeship. Under a literal interpretation of the law, clients who permit unqualified technician to work on their computers could be just as guilty and subject to prison time as well.

How this ridiculous situation came to exist is not known, but I can venture a guess. When you put vested interests who do not understand the technology they are using together with stupid politicians who do not even read the laws they pass, the result is a law like this one.

I count among my clients a number of attorneys and judges, and I have decades of experience working with the legal profession. People who work in a law office, from secretaries to the people who work on computers, are told of the obligation to respect confidentiality.

In my professional career I have worked on some interesting legal cases, so I think I know what the lawmakers were trying to do when they passed this law. There must have been an instance in which some computer technician either did not observe the normal secrecy requirements, or botched a forensic investigation due to inadequate training. The new law was an attempt to make sure computer technicians were properly schooled on rules of evidence and such.

Another view is that the community of private investigators is striking back at Google. A lot of the investigation that used to be done by private investigators (PIs) sometimes can be done now by anybody with access to the internet. Apparently some PIs do not like the competition. They say that if any technician investigates a computer problem, they have to be TPSB licensed investigators. So maybe the PIs were behind the new law—while the statute requires computer techies to be licensed PIs, other PIs are not even required to know how to turn on a computer.

This law might have been rescinded the first time a state legislator needed a computer tech and found none available. But as is the case with many laws, the lawmakers exempted themselves from the statute. As is almost always the case, the test of the law will come if and when someone is ever prosecuted for violating it.

Eventually this episode is going to go down in history along with other crazy laws. Some loony laws do make sense, such as the one that says in Louisiana you may not tie an alligator to a fire hydrant. Just ask the Cajun whose house burned down! But having to be licensed as a gumshoe in order to repair a computer just does not compute.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.