Supreme Court Limits Prosecutions For Unauthorized Computer Use

WASHINGTON -- A Supreme Court ruling late last week makes it harder to impose liability on employees who use government agency or law firm computers for unauthorized purposes.

The ruling restricts the Justice Department's authority to prosecute unauthorized computer use under the 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It also makes it harder for employers to sue their workers when they misuse computer access.

"The government's interpretation of the [law] would attach criminal penalties to a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority.

The issue arose in the case of a Cummings, Georgia police officer who accepted $6,000 from an acquaintance to check a computer database to determine whether a stripper was an undercover law enforcement agent.

The acquaintance who requested the database search was an FBI informant who was helping in the arrest of Van Buren.

He was found guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in a jury trial and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Van Buren’s appeals led him to the Supreme Court.

The ruling comes at a time the government is struggling with strategies to halt damaging cyberattacks, which could originate from insider use of an organization’s computers.

Prosecutors’ primary legal tool against insider hacking of government and private computer networks is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Historically it has been used by businesses seeking to stop insiders from inappropriately tapping into their trade secrets.

The clause of the law considered by the Supreme Court forbids persons from using their computer access “to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter."

Van Buren’s attorney argued the federal law allows prosecutions or lawsuits for deviations from employee job duties as minor as a secretary opening a work Zoom account for personal use.

A Justice Department attorney said Van Buren’s attorney exaggerated with a "wild caricature of our position."

The case is Van Buren v. U.S., case number 19-783, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.