Top court denies review of computer access case

The US Supreme Court has denied certiorari in two cases concerning who can give permission to access a computer, an issue crucial to the determination of the meaning of the term ‘hacking’. According to a Jurist report, one of these cases involved a Facebook suit against Cayman Islands-based Power Ventures Inc under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, after Power Ventures began offering its users the ability to access Facebook through its own portal. Power Ventures claimed that it had obtained user consent to access the data they stored on Facebook, while Facebook claimed that Power Ventures was harvesting data in a manner that was making it insecure. The other appeal involved the criminal conviction of David Nosal for computer fraud after he accessed a confidential database of his former employer with the help of two other former employees. The trio used the login credentials of a fourth employee who was still with the company. In refusing to review the case, the justices have declined to decide at this time whether account holders can grant a third party access to a computer system they do not themselves own. That leaves intact the holding of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last year in both cases, which concluded that only the owners themselves may grant authorisation, and not account holders or employees with legitimate access credentials.