Introduction
In the modern day, the most controversial computer hacking cases are reported to use the CFAA law to prosecute law breakers on felony hacking charges. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), monitors excess unauthorized access and prohibits unauthorized users to access information or codes of protected computers and networks. Such measures reduce the exceeding access of ex-employees or employees so that they refrain from violating the protection of company secrets or using such information to start up their organizations (Simmons, 2016). The law also protects government and financial institutions from receiving and transmitting unknown codes, commands, programs, and information to a computer that has protection.
Discussion
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act covers the penalties for the intended damage of any protected computer; it gives provisions against online or interface traffickers that use or expose passwords that may affect foreign or interface commerce. Additionally, the CFAA is used to convict individuals that have possessed the intent or pose a threat when they access information in such computers for the purposes of impairing (Simmons, 2016). The penalties attached to the violation of the CFAA law include a five-year sentence for individuals that had knowledge of the federal policies or had a private agreement with the institution.
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Other charges in violation of the CFAA include the cumulative fines in every offense with the accumulation of jail sentence. Most convictions that base on charges that include the unauthorized or the excess access of company information aims at ex-employees who often use company information to fraud the former employee or threaten the security of the enterprise.
Case Study
A recent case on the application of the CFAA is in the conviction of David Nosal, who committed a computer policy crime against his company, Korn Ferry International (Zetter, 2015). Nosal illegally accessed the company database by using the solicited permission and knowledge of legitimate employees in his former company. The widely publicized case, ‘The United States versus Nosal’ dealt with the situation of an ex-employee who violated the protection mechanisms through unauthorized access to the company’s database with the intent to steal trade secrets (Zetter, 2015).
The federal jury in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit convicted him of the nine counts of all charges. He tried to appeal, but he was denied based on his actions ‘without authorization’ in the law’s context of the CFAA. The court argued that an individual did not have to hack to face charges as a hacker in agreement with the CFAA. He met a one year and a day jail sentence (Zetter, 2015). The United States versus Nosal Case is currently under appeal.
Reflection and Conclusion
I believe the verdict is fair based on the clause that offers protection of federal computers and unauthorized access to information that protects the secrets of a company in the CFAA. Nosal violated the agreement between him and the company after the termination of his contract as a member of the Korn Ferry International organization. He, therefore, acted against the company policies that protect the unauthorized access to the trade secrets. In addition to this violation, he carried the intent to acquire information that would enable him start up his company and therefore used the legitimate information of him former colleagues to defraud the company.
The verdict also bases on fairness on the concept of transfer of authorized information to a third party that would use the same trade secrets to start up a competing business. His former colleagues exceedingly accessed the information and shared it with a third party, thereby making them accomplices to the crime. The access to trade secrets is also in a category of intellectual theft that is punishable by law and touches on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (McCormick, 2013). The verdict was, however, unfair because the court used the CFAA to persecute him for misuse of protected computers rather than the acquisition of critical information and trade secrets. The CFAA is less lenient on such charges but federal institutions use it to persecute hackers who violate computer protection rights (Zetter, 2015).
References
McCormick, W. C. (2013). Computer Fraud & Abuse Act: Failing to Evolve with the Digital Age, The. SMU Sci. & Tech. L. Rev. , 16 , 481.
Simmons, R. (2016). The Failure of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Time to Take a New Approach to Regulating Computer Crime. George Washington Law Review, Forthcoming .
Zetter, K. (2015). The Most Controversial Hacking Cases of the Past Decade . WIRED . Retrieved 18 August 2016, from < https://www.wired.com/2015/10/cfaa-computer-fraud-abuse-act-most-controversial-computer-hacking-cases/#slide-x >
