Under today’s interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), if executives in Florida and North Carolina each pay a rival organization’s unfaithful employee to copy trade secrets from the competitor’s information stores, the Government can charge only one executive, but not both. These cases and many others get decided differently due to the ever-widening split over the CFAA term “without authorization,” currently interpreted five separate ways. Research the term “without authorization” as it pertains to CFAA, and, with supporting references, cite what you interpret this term to mean.
