HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In ''International Airport Centers, L.L.C. v. Citrin'', the
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (in case citations, 7th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts: * Central District of Illinois * Northern District of ...
evaluated the dismissal of the plaintiffs' lawsuit for failure to state a claim based upon the interpretation of the word "transmission" in the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law pro ...
, . Lemley, Mark A.; Menell, Peter S.; Merges, Robert A. ''Software and Internet Law''. 4th ed. New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 2011. Jacob Citrin had been employed by IAC, who had lent him a laptop for use while under their employment. Upon leaving IAC, he deleted the data on the laptop before returning it to IAC. The Court of Appeals decided to reverse the decision and reinstated IAC's lawsuit.


Facts

International Airport Centers, L.L.C. (IAC) is a group of companies in the real estate business.AJH.
International Airport Centers v. Citrin
" Cases of Interest. Risch, Michael. 23 Apr 2010. 6 Feb 2012.
IAC employed the defendant, Jacob Citrin, to identify potential acquisitions and record data about these properties. IAC lent Citrin a laptop for this purpose. Citrin became self-employed and quit IAC, breaching his employment contract in the process. He deleted the data on the laptop before returning it to IAC, using a secure-erasure software that rendered files irrecoverable. This process destroyed data that he had collected for IAC in addition to data revealing improper workplace conduct. The provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act provides that whoever "knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer" violates the Act. Citrin argued that erasing a file from a computer is not a "transmission." The district court agreed and dismissed the lawsuit since it determined that the deletion of the files did not violate the CFAA. However, Circuit Judge Posner examined the "transmission" of the secure-erasure program to the computer, stating that the method of transmission here – whether it was installed through a network or a disc – is irrelevant. "Damage" here included "any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information."


Ruling

The court ruled that Citrin's authorization terminated with his breach of his
duty of loyalty The duty of loyalty is often called the cardinal principal of fiduciary relationships, but is particularly strict in the law of trusts. In that context, the term refers to a trustee's duty to administer the trust solely in the interest of the ben ...
in quitting, and that his actions were "exceeding authorized access", as defined by the CFAA to be "access nga computer with authorization and…us ngsuch access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter." While Citrin argued that his employment contract authorized him to "return or destroy" data in the laptop, it was unlikely that this was intended to authorize him to irreversibly destroy data that the company had no copies of, or data that incriminated him in misconduct. Therefore, the judgment was reversed with directions to reinstate the suit. This case was one of a series of cases that applied the CFAA to employee misconduct. Originally, the CFAA had been crafted to prevent criminal hacking in government interest computers. The definition of "authorization" used in ''Citrin'' would be later rejected by the
Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...
court in '' LVRC Holdings v. Brekka'' in favor of a more narrow "active authorization" that is granted by an authority.Pollaro, Greg
“Disloyal Computer Use and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Narrowing the Scope”
Duke Law & Technology Review. 2010. 6 Feb 2012.


See also

*
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law pro ...
* '' United States v. Lori Drew'' * '' United States v. Nosal''


References

{{Reflist


External links


William Kane represented International Airport CentersJust Add Plaintiff: The Seventh Circuit’s Recipe for Instant Liability Under the CFAA
* ttp://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2006/20060308b.asp 7th Circuit Applies Computer Hacking Statute to Use of Trace Removers on Employee Laptopsbr>International Airport Centers v. Citrin: Employment IssuesInsideCounsel: Combating employee misconduct
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit cases United States Internet case law United States federal criminal case law