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Supremes Reign-in CFAA

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is a federal law that has been effect since the 1980s and like the RICO laws, gives federal prosecutors very broad ability to charge people who they think have done something wrong. Since the CFAA was written before the Internet, it wasn’t written with online systems in mind.

In this case, the feds charged a Georgia cop, who received a bribe to check on a license plate for someone who wanted to know if a car belonged to a cop, with violating the CFAA.

The part of the CFAA they used was the part that said he used the computer in excess of his authority.

Typically the feds use the CFAA, like RICO, to threaten a decades long sentence to get criminals to plead out, saving the feds money and reducing the risk that they could actually lose.

Using the CFAA the way the feds have done could make violating a web site’s terms of service, like lying about your birthday on Facebook, a felony.

Trump’s last appointed justice, conservative Amy Coney Barret, wrote the opinion and was joined by a mixture of conservative and liberal justices: Breyer, Sotomayer, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

The justices said that he accessed the computer WITH authorization and he then used that authorized access to obtain or alter information that he is not entitled to obtain or alter.

In fact, it is not clear that he was not authorized to access the data. It does seem clear that the purpose for which he accessed the data was not authorized.

My guess is that the penalty for a cop taking a bribe is far less than the penalties for violating the CFAA, which can, in some cases, include life in prison.

It is certainly possible that this could cause Congress to update the CFAA. Such an update is long overdue. Credit: Bleeping Computer