I think we are confusing two concepts here.
The officer's actions were unauthorized on a system he was provided access to. He didn't gain unauthorized access to a system, he failed to follow the rules on a system he already had access to.
The officer's actions were unauthorized on a system he was provided access to. He didn't gain unauthorized access to a system, he failed to follow the rules on a system he already had access to.
Er, no, that's specifically not the case. The officer's actions on the system in fact were authorized; he was authorized to look up licence plate information. The officer's actions later - specifically sharing private information with a third party - were criminal[0], and would be criminal regardless of whether a computer was even involved.
0: Give or take legislative and judicial corruption a al misrepresenting theft as 'civil forfeiture', but that's not really the point.
I don't think GP is in disagreement with you that it's potentially illegal, just that the CFAA shouldn't apply here.
I am confused about how(/whether?) confused you are about what I said.
> > > The officer's actions were unauthorized on a system he was provided access to.
The CFAA does not apply here, because the officer's actions on the system were authorized. He did not "failed to follow the rules on a system he already had access to", he followed those rules, then separately did something illegal[see previous footnote] with the information he obtained in accordance with those rules.
If his actions (on the system) were unauthorized, that would be a CFAA violation, even he was authorized to access the system in some other way.
- Logging onto the system: officer has technical access to log on and is authorized to log on, no problem
- Accessing normal data the officer needs for legitimate reason: officer has technical access to this data and is authorized to access it, no problem
- Accessing data for the purpose of a bribe: officer has technical access to this data, but is not authorized to access it, thus they are exceeding their authorized access
Put another way, he didn't work around any computer controls to get at the information.
That's irrelevant. You can do unauthorized things without having to "work around" controls.
>He clearly did not hack into the computer system to get the data, and that's what the CFAA was meant to prosecute.
The CFAA was meant to prevent computer-related crimes including but not limited to unauthorized access, fraud, abuse, etc, which this clearly was.
SCOTUS disagrees with you, and so do I.
> The CFAA was meant to prevent computer-related crimes including but not limited to unauthorized access, fraud, abuse, etc, which this clearly was.
He didn't do any of those with respect to the computer system. He accessed a resource that he had authorization to access as part of his job. He misused it, but didn't break into the system or gain access by fraud. His reasons for accessing the data were wrong, but his access was authorized.
If the officer was explicitly told 'you can use the computer system, and it can do plate lookups, but you're not allowed to perform plate lookups ever', then he went ahead and made a plate lookup anyway, I'm not entirely clear that the ruling would exclude that from being a CFAA charge, even without there being any password or permission model to lock him out of that functionality. I could be wrong there - there may be other caselaw on that - but I didn't read much in the ruling that suggested they were interested in the extent to which the system technically restricted access to this functionality.
But in this case he had legitimate technical access, he was authorized to use it to look up plate data, and the SCOTUS verdict, sensibly, concludes that using that access for an illegitimate purpose does not merit a CFAA charge.
This, by definition, makes his access unauthorized. That's the point. "Authorization" is more than just technical controls. He was not authorized to access the data for this reason.
You are applying too broad a definition to "authorization." In this context it refers specifically to the configured authorization behavior of the computer system. They gave him the equivalent of a key to a lock implemented in the computer system, and the law is meant to address the equivalent of someone who pick locks, not someone who misuses the access provided by keys they were given.
SCOTUS just literally said the opposite.
The term "unauthorized" is overloaded. There is one sense in which he was unauthorized by policy. There is another sense by which he was authorized by technical access. These are separate scenarios and separate violations. It makes no sense for unauthorized-by-policy to be a violation of a computer hacking statute.
At the "seems pretty clearly like unauthorized access" end of the spectrum, we can imagine someone brute-forcing a password to gain access to a system. They're "authorized by technical access" once they have the username/password, but that's surely a focal case of the kind of crime that the statute was intended to address.
Alternatively, say there was a guest account activated with a default password.
Would we argue that someone with no relationship to the owner who discovered the account was active and then used it was "authorized by technical access"?
Presumably the answer is that authorization in that case depends on whether it was the intent to allow strangers to use the system as a guest or whether it was some kind of technical oversight.
What about if you were hired as a data entry operator, but your account was accidentally set up as a superuser? The owner of the system intended to give you one level of access but accidentally gave you another. Are you a hacker if you use the unintended access grant to snoop around? Again, you're "authorized by technical access".
What about if your boss puts his username/password on a post-it note on his monitor and you use his account without his knowledge? What about if you use it with his knowledge and agreement?
> That's irrelevant. You can do unauthorized things without having to "work around" controls.
You are conflating bypassing security measures (which in the digital world would be equivalent of lock picking) and abuse of trust (throwing a party and trashing the home of someone who trusted you with the keys to only feed the cat).
Say I give a neighborhood kid a key to come water my plants while I'm out of town. If they use that key to gain access and throw a party they're trespassing. I don't see why it should be different for a CPU
For purposes of this law, it is. The Government agreed “that Van Buren ‘access[ed] a computer with authorization HK’ when he used his patrol-car computer and valid credentials to log into the law enforcement database” [1].
“The dispute is whether Van Buren was ‘entitled so to obtain’ the record.” The Court found that Van Buren was entitled so to obtain the record, in that entitlement is the operative word. If the file is electronically accessible to the user, they have entitlement to so, *i.e. electronically, obtain it. They aren’t properly authorised or permitted or something else to it. But those weren’t the words used. "Authorized," unadorned, and "entitled so to."
[1] https://www.supreme court.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf
Did he steal your key? Or did you give it to him? If he stole your key, he wasn't entitled to your house. But if you gave him the key, he had entitlement to it.
If this were a friend, not a kid, you might be able to sue her for throwing a party in your house without permission. You would not be able to get her charged with breaking and entering because she overstepped the conditions that came with your key.
Presume they had intent to water and steal at a felony level when they entered.
If they had to break open the door, entering would be burglary.
Using a key they were supposed to have, to enter a building they were supposed to be able to enter? I would say it should be treated like the former case, not the latter case.
US law may not always agree with me, and apparently there are states where shoplifting can count as burglary. But I say stretching the definition that far is ridiculous.