In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court just narrowed the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act:

In a ruling delivered today, the court sided with Van Buren and overturned his 18-month conviction.

In a 37-page opinion written and delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court explained that the “exceeds authorized access” language was, indeed, too broad.

Justice Barrett said the clause was effectively making criminals of most US citizens who ever used a work resource to perform unauthorized actions, such as updating a dating profile, checking sports scores, or paying bills at work.

What today’s ruling means is that the CFAA cannot be used to prosecute rogue employees who have legitimate access to work-related resources, which will need to be prosecuted under different charges.

The ruling does not apply to former employees accessing their old work systems because their access has been revoked and they’re not “authorized” to access those systems anymore. //.

Clive Robinson • June 7, 2021 9:43 AM

I’ve already commented on why the law was technically very bad.

But a saliant legal point was that it confused contracts and legislation.

That is it alowed a non legalistive organidation such as a corporation to write a document that had criminal penalties.

That is wrong by any measure.

In the US you get taught that,

A tort arises from a breach of a private duty and a crime arises from a breach of a public duty.

The two should never ever be confused getting on for atleast two millennia of jurisprudence has repeatedly shown that any cross over leads to an escalation of undesirable outcomes and other unintended consequences that easily cascade into what becomes a runaway set of consequences.

But then US legislators have a history going right back to the constirution of at the best antipathy towards democracy right through to ensuring that the citizens have no rights in any form.

The CFAA was an insidious form of the age old game of “Rights Striping” by ensuring a “non equity of arms” which favours those that see themselves as entitled through the holding of property and directly or indirectly other humans as chattels or endentured servitude.