[cortesoft]

> I disagree with that SCOTUS decision. It completely obliterated CFAA. Imagine if they said nurses/doctors could do that with their terminals and it didn't violate HIPAA.

The court was absolutely correct in their ruling. If you don't want cops using that data for their own purposes, it should be against the law.... it doesn't make sense to use the CFAA as a catch all for stopping people from misusing data they were given access to. If we do, it gives every private company the ability to make breaking their EULA a criminal offense. That is ridiculous.

HIPPA is a good example of how the law should work. You make what you want illegal; it has nothing to do with computers.

Why would the cop using a computer to access the information be against the law but not a cop going and reading a paper file?

[dragonwriter]

> HIP[A]A is a good example of how the law should work. You make what you want illegal; it has nothing to do with computers.

HIPAA has lots of rules that apply only with computers (or, specifically, a very interesting definition of “electronic transaction”), which is a big reason fax is still a thing in healthcare, because transactions conducted by fax are not considered “electronic” under HIPAA, so a variety of rules that apply when transactions are conducted electronically do not apply.

[Goety]

> use the CFAA as a catch all for stopping people from misusing data they were given access to. If we do, it gives every private company the ability to make breaking their EULA a criminal offense. That is ridiculous.

That is a stretch. This case was specifically applied to the public sector and 'not completely unauthorized' makes CFAA almost inapplicable to public sector databases.