The U.S. Supreme Court recently narrowed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), 18 U. S. C. Section 1030, a federal law that makes it illegal “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accessor is not entitled so to obtain or alter.”

The high court decided, by a 6-3 margin, a former police officer who used his position to search a computer database for license-plate records for an illicit purpose, did not violate the CFAA.