3 ms·
Actually I don't know that SCOTUS has much to say in this ruling on the necessity of effective technical controls. If the officer was explicitly told 'you can
by jameshart 5y ago
Actually I don't know that SCOTUS has much to say in this ruling on the necessity of effective technical controls.
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.