4.2) EMPLOYEES
Recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that an employee “exceeds authorized access” under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) when the employee obtains information from an employer’s computer system and uses that information for a purpose that violates the employer’s restrictions on the use of that information. The violation can range from obtaining information to damaging a computer or computer data. What this boils down to is that employees can be criminally prosecuted for violating their employers’ computer policies.
Workers may use information technology for personal profit or to steal hardware or information to sell. They may also use it to seek revenge for real or imagined wrongs, such as being passed over for promotion; indeed, the disgruntled employee is a principal source of computer crime.