San Francisco & Bay Area Criminal Defense Lawyers

On April 10, 2012, an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals limited the application of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), 18 U.S.C. § 1030, to violations of restrictions in accessing information, i.e. “hacking,” rather than criminalizing violations of restrictions on use of information obtained through authorized access of a computer.  In United States v. Nosal , an ex-employee of an executive recruiting firm was prosecuted on the theory that he persuaded current company employees of the company to access the company's proprietary database and provide him with information in violation of corporate computer-use policy, presumably to start a competing business. The government claimed that the violation of this private policy was a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Following a decision issued in 2009 by the Ninth Circuit, the district court ruled that violations of corporate policy are not equivalent to violations of federal computer c...

The United States Supreme Court, led by Judge Scalia, ruled that a federal district court had the discretion to order that defendant's federal sentence run concurrently to the anticipated, but not yet imposed, state court sentence.  This was Sester v. United States , March 28, 2012; 10-7387. For assistance with federal sentencing and related issues, contact the attorneys at Campbell & Jayne LLP at: http://www.bayarea-criminaldefense.com/ .