Case Law For Unauthorized Access

Cyber Security: Case Law for Unauthorized Access During the beginning stages of the Internet, many websites, programs, and computer software’s remained unprotected and extremely vulnerable. Although enacted in 1984, according to Rouse and Cole (n.d.), “the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1986 is United States legislation that made it a federal crime to access a protected computer without proper authorization” (para. 1). At the same time, it was easy for high-school level programmers and hackers to essentially hack into websites due to the the level of needed-protection being so low. However, when the CFAA went into effect, Pfleeger, C., Pfleeger, S., and Margulies (2015) report that the CFAA prohibited “unauthorized access to a

Swartz (2013). A case that has been reported as “he most concerted effort to revise the CFAA came after a U.S. attorney used it to launch a heavy-handed prosecution against internet activist Aaron Swartz for what many considered a minor infraction” (Zetter, 2014, para. 7). In short, Aaron Swartz “was indicted after he gained entry to a closet at MIT and allegedly connected a laptop to the university’s network to download millions of academic papers that were distributed by the JSTOR subscription service” (para. 7). Charges for Swartz’s case reached a maximum of one (1) million dollars in fines and up to thirty-five (35) years in prison (Randall, 2013, para. 2). With the flaws and punishments outline within the CFAA, Swartz was heavily charged. Unfortunately, Swartz committed suicide due to the severity of the charges for a crime that should have received a lesser sentence. Being titled as “outdated,” the CFAA underwent another change and created Arron’s Law. Simply put, “Aaron’s Law removes the phrase ‘exceeds authorized access’ and replaces it with ‘access without authorization,’ which it defines as, ‘to obtain information on a computer that the accesser lacks authorization to obtain” (Randall, 2013, para. 5). Furthermore, Arron’s Law would exclude breaches of terms of service and user “agreements from the law and also narrow the definition of unauthorized access to make a clear distinction between criminal hacking activity and simple acts that exceed authorized access on a minor level” (Zetter, 2014, para. 8). As it is stated, Aaron’s Law sets to clarify statues within the CFAA and protect those from being heavily charged for minor