Like the RICO Statutes that were originally designed to combat organized crime and soon took on a life of their own by being applied to a wide-range of seemingly legitimate businesses, the New Jersey and federal computer fraud statutes have now vastly exceeded their original purpose of preventing tampering with computers.
There are a number of differences between the New Jersey Computer Fraud Statute (N.J.S.A. 2A:38-1) and the federal Computer Fraud Statute (18 U.S.C. § 1030). In this post I intend to discuss one of the more significant differences. In subsequent posts, I will discuss additional differences.
The federal statute specially applies to those that access a computer without "authorization or exceeding authorized access" while the New Jersey computer fraud statute addresses unauthorized access. This distinction is significant.
Exceeding access, as governed by the federal statute, could apply to employees that have the right to access their employer's computer system and exceed access by, for example, by copying confidential information used for a competitor or damaging a computer that they have authorized access to. The federal statute specifically provides for those claims, while the New Jersey statute seems to only apply to unauthorized access — that is strangers to the computer.
It is important when determining whether to assert claims to consider this distinction. Many states have computer statutes that track the federal statute in terms of expressly authorizing claims for individuals that exceed their authorized access. A careful decision on where to file suit should therefore be made.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
