Bay Area showdown over federal anti-hacking law

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

The U.S. Justice Department's longrunning case against a Bay Area executive continues to test the national boundaries of a 31-year-old federal law designed to crack down on computer hackers.

In a legal showdown closely watched by digital privacy groups and the tech industry, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday will hear the latest chapter in the eight-year clash between the government and convicted Danville executive David Nosal over the scope of the anti-hacking law.

The appeals court has once before addressed the sweeping tech issues in play in the case, ruling three years ago that federal prosecutors went too far in their original charges against Nosal by trying to punish the type of on-the-job computer use that could criminalize "minor dalliances" on Facebook and Google in the workplace.

This time around, Nosal, convicted of six remaining felonies in a 2013 retrial, has again urged the 9th Circuit to slap down the government's use of the 1984 law, known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. While narrower in some ways than the first case, the appeals court is being asked to consider a question that experts say has national consequences: how the anti-hacking law applies to securing passwords, even with the consent of password holders, to access confidential online accounts, whether company databases or even social media sites such as Facebook.

A story for HR professionals to look at.