This is going to be tough to argue from a hacking standpoint. IANAL, but a quick perusal of some of the hacking-related legislation shows that almost all federa

This is going to be tough to argue from a hacking standpoint. IANAL, but a quick perusal of some of the hacking-related legislation shows that almost all federal definitions of "hacking" involve "without or exceeding authorization "(See sections (1)(a), (1)(b), and (1)(c) in the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA) [1]). A definition of that phrase is provided at length in this pamphlet [2] put out by the Department of Justice Cybercrime division. Specifically, from the first document (section (e)(6)): > the term "exceeds authorized access" means to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter and from the second (section A.2): > The term “without authorization” is not defined by the CFAA. The term “exceeds authorized access” means “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter.” Later in the same section, it states: > Prosecutors rarely argue that a defendant accessed a computer “without authorization” when the defendant had some authority to access that computer. However, several civil cases have held that defendants lost their authorization to access computers when they breached a duty of loyalty to the authorizing parties, even if the authorizing parties were unaware of the breach. [...] Some of these cases further suggest that such a breach can occur when the user decides to access the computer for a purpose that is contrary to the interests of the authorizing party. See, e.g., Citrin, 440 F.3d at 420 (defendant’s authorization to access computer terminated when he resolved to destroy employer’s files); ViChip Corp. v. Lee, 438 F. Supp. 2d 1087, 1100 (N.D. Cal. 2006) (same); NCMIC Finance Corp. v. Artino, 638 F. Supp. 2d 1042, 1057 (S.D. Iowa 2009) (“[T]he determinative question is whether Artino breached his duty of loyalty to NCMIC when Artino obtained information from NCMIC’s computers.”). Not sure what to make of that, as again, IANAL. Still, this is definitely not hacking in the traditional legal sense. [1]: http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/cioprod/documents/ComputerFraud-AbuseAct.pdf http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/cioprod/documents/Compute... [2]: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/docs/ccmanual.pdf http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/docs/ccmanual.pdf