Government workers repeatedly snooped without authorization inside the electronic passport records of entertainers, athletes and other high-profile Americans, a State Department audit has found. One celebrity's records were breached 356 times by more than six dozen people...

When the scandal erupted earlier this year, State Department officials suggested that the department maintained a list of "flagged files" to ensure that records of high-profile individuals were not breached. But investigators found that only 38 people were on the watch list, and there was no system or specific methodology for putting them there.

The watch list has since been expanded to more than 1,000 people, including all members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, senior administration officials, and entertainers, media personalities and sports figures.

Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

According to Ronaldo Lemos, by referring to "computer networks", "communication devices" and "information systems", the draft law covers not only computers, but also MP3 players, cell phones, DVD players, software systems and even digital TV set-top boxes, not to mention websites. Following this line of reasoning, the bill would cover even the act of unblocking a cell phone.

The professors claim that no country criminalizes access to information on the Internet in such broad fashion. "The closest legislation to what is being proposed here is the one passed in the USA, which criminalizes the act of circumventing technological protection measures. But no law has criminalized access itself," mentions the brief.

Article 285-B qualifies as a crime - also punished with 1 to 3 years of imprisonment and a fine - "to obtain or transfer data or information" without prior authorization of the legitimate owner.

The professors propose the exclusion or amendment of the text of two articles of the draft law. They suggest that the access and transference of information on the Internet be considered a crime only if fraud or "unlawful advantages" are involved.