A Texas Jury’s Guilty Verdict Should Worry IT Admins

A Texas Jury’s Guilty Verdict Should Worry IT Admins

Andy Greenberg | June 13, 2016

If you're 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.”

Source: http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2010/03/east-texas-jurors-and-patent-litigation/

<more at https://www.wired.com/2016/06/texas-jurys-guilty-verdict-worry-admins/; related articles and links: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/admin-faces-felony-deleting-files-flawed-hacking-law/ (IT Admin Faces Felony for Deleting Files Under Flawed Hacking Law. June 3, 2016) and https://www.eff.org/cases/u-s-v-nosal (United States v. David Nosal. June 13, 2016)>