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You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.Extract from article by Andy Greenberg
If you are a systems administrator working in the United States, a recent decision from 12 Texan jurors should give you a moment of pause before you next hit the delete key.
On Wednesday last week, a jury in the trial of 37-year-old Michael Thomas found him guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a verdict with a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 in restitution payments. But unlike the typical convictions under that controversial and vague computer hacking law, Thomas can hardly be called a hacker: He’s accused of deleting a collection of his employer’s files before leaving his job as a systems administrator at the auto dealership software firm ClickMotive in 2011. And critics of the CFAA say that Thomas’s prosecution—and now conviction—reveal a dangerous facet of the law that allows an IT staffer to be charged with a felony for simply doing something that their employer deems to be “damaging.”
Read the complete article at A Texas Jury’s Guilty Verdict Should Worry IT Admins