Computer trespass is a

computer crime A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network.Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. The computer may have been used in committing t ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

involving unlawful access to computers. It is defined under the

Computer Fraud and Abuse act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law p ...

. ( U.S.C 18 § 1030)

Definition

A computer trespass is defined as accessing a computer without proper authorization and gaining financial information, information from a department or agency from any protected computer. Each state has its own laws regarding computer trespassing but they all echo the federal act in some manner.

Examples of state legislation

New York

To be found guilty of computer

trespass Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels Trespass to chattels is a tort whereby the infringing party has intentionally (or, in Australia, negligently) interfered with ...

in New York one must knowingly use a computer, computer service, or

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

without authorization ''and'' commit (or attempt) some further crime.

Ohio

(A) No person shall knowingly use or operate the property of another without the consent of the owner or person authorized to give consent. (B) No person, in any manner and by any means, including, but not limited to, computer hacking, shall knowingly gain access to, attempt to gain access to, or cause access to be gained to any computer, computer system, computer network, cable service, cable system, telecommunications device, telecommunications service, or information service without the consent of, or beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of, the owner of the computer, computer system, computer network, cable service, cable system, telecommunications device, telecommunications service, or information service or other person authorized to give consent.

Punishment

Under federal law, the punishment for committing a computer trespass is imprisonment for no more than 10 or 20 years, depending on the severity of the crime committed. (subsection (a) (b) (c) (1) (A) (B))

Criticism of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act

Years after the CFAA was put into law, many have become uncomfortable with the law's language because of the drastic difference between today's technology and the technology of the 1980s. Legal scholars such as

Orin Kerr Orin Samuel Kerr (born June 2, 1971) is an American legal scholar and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law."Faculty , UC Berkeley School of Law"Orin Kerr faculty profile/ref> He is known as a scholar in the subjects of computer crim ...

and

Tiffany Curtis Tiffany may refer to: People * Tiffany (given name), list of people with this name * Tiffany (surname), list of people with this surname Known mononymously as "Tiffany": * Tiffany Darwish, (born 1971), an American singer, songwriter, actress kno ...

have expressed such concerns. In one of Curtis's essays, "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Enforcement: Cruel, Unusual, and Due for Reform." She expresses how, with the passage of time, the CFAA becomes a more cruel law with the current language used in the act. She then suggests that the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washi ...

should take the act into review and refer it to the Eighth Amendment to update the language to better fit modern law and society. Kerr wrote in his essay, "Trespass, Not Fraud: The Need for New Sentencing Guidelines in CFAA Cases," that since the language is so vague in the act, you could be punished in a way that doesn't reflect the crime you committed. He stresses how the language stresses the financial fraud language more than any other part in the law, leaving the rest vague in meaning.

Notable computer breaches

2013 Yahoo! Data Breach The Internet service company Yahoo! was subjected to the largest data breach on record. Two major data breaches of user account data to hackers were revealed during the second half of 2016. The first announced breach, reported in September 2016 ...

* 2014 eBay Data Breach * 2013 Target Data breach *

2017 Equifax data breach The Equifax data breach occurred between May and July 2017 at the American credit bureau Equifax. Private records of 147.9 million Americans along with 15.2 million British citizens and about 19,000 Canadian citizens were compromised in the breach ...

References

{{reflist Computer law