USSC to Resolve Circuit Split: Is a Violation of your Organization's Computer Use Policy a Federal Crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Litigation and Dispute Resolution attorneys Josh Roberts and Michael Decembrino co-authored an article on a case to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding whether the breach of an organization's computer use policy constitutes a federal crime. The case, Van Buren v. United States, concerns a Georgia police officer who used an official government database to search for a woman's identify on behalf of a friend and who was subsequently tried and convicted of a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The Supreme Court will have to decide what it means to "exceed authorized access" to a computer under the act, an interpretation that has seen sharp divisions among appellate courts. The article was published in the Association of Corporate Counsel's Q4 newsletter.