SCOTUS Takes Up Computer “Fraud” Case

The U.S. Supreme Court today took up the case of Van Buren v. United States, No. 19-783. The case involves a law enacted to prohibit computer hacking but which can be, and by some courts has been, interpreted to make a crime out of a mere breach of contract.

All of us regularly accept end user license agreements (EULAs). Few, if any, of us actually read the voluminous text of the numerous agreements that we must necessarily accept to make full use of the wonders of the internet. To actually make it a crime to breach a contract provision and access an online site in excess of what is authorized by the EULA might well be the grossest act of overcriminalization in American history. Yet the text was written under the powerful lobbying of the computer industry, which sought maximum protection for itself and cared nothing about protecting its customers from overreach.

This is not the greatest case to raise the issue. It involves a dirty cop selling access to law-enforcement data. Still, it is important to settle the interpretation of this statute.

In other action, nonunanimous jury verdicts in state-court trials for serious crimes bit the dust in a fractured opinion in Ramos v. Louisiana, No. 18-5924. Only two states, Oregon and Louisiana, allowed them. I will have more to say on this case later.