by Sharon Barrow

Created on: February 06, 2008

The main laws covering hacking in the United States is found in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This act was passed in 1984 and has been amended many times, most recently by the Patriot Act in 2001. Interestingly, it doesn't define hacking as just accessing any computer that isn't yours. For the hacking to be illegal, it would have to contain an element of knowing or intentionally meaning to defraud or cause harm either financially, physically, or operationally. Naturally, the majority of the law concerns government computers. Specifically, the Act makes it illegal to obtain access without authorization to a computer for these reasons:

to get national security data
to get information from a financial institution
to get any information from any department or agency of the United States
to affect any government computer's operation
to gain something of value by fraud
to cause damage to a computer that results in financial loss, physical loss, threat to public safety, or misdiagnoses
and to use password information with the intent to defraud.

In 2001, the Patriot beefed up the penalties associated with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This raised the penalty to 10 years for a first offense and 20 years for a second offense and prior state offenses can be considered for sentencing. It also closed a loophole concerning amount of damage. Previously, damage had to be worth at least $5,000 dollars. Now, as long as there was some damage, the act of hacking is illegal. The Patriot Act also expanded the definition of "loss" to include time spent investigating the hacker and the hacker's crime.

In general, you can access your friends computer through hacking as long as you are not intending to defraud him, he is not on a government computer, and you don't cause any damage to the computer. Anything else is illegal.

Personally, I think the laws should read that anytime anyone accesses any computer without authorization, it should be an illegal act. Hacking originally had a mystique among computer geeks. Having the ability to best the computer defenses. That should no longer be allowed, permitted, or tolerated. The only thing a hacker proves by breaking into somebody or some companies database is that they are criminal in nature.

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