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wavemodeyesterday at 7:07 PM1 replyview on HN

The federal government outlaws "knowingly accessing a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access" to obtain information from any "protected computer" (which, in this context, means any computer involved in interstate commerce - which, in practice, has been ruled such that it certainly includes any Internet-connected server of a corporation).

Your defense would have to be that you were authorized to access the data, or that you did not know that you weren't authorized to access the data. Not merely that the data was easily accessible.


Replies

efreakyesterday at 11:50 PM

I suppose you might be able to argue that everyone is authorized to view the data if they made no attempt whatsoever to prevent you from doing so.