Baseball's Hacking Case: Are You a Hacker Too?

Daniel J. Solove, John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law, writes about the St. Louis Cardinals "hack" into a Houston Astros database. Cardinals employees allegedly used known passwords to access the Astros' database, an act prohibited by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which imposes penalties whenever a person intentionally accesses a computer without permission. "People need basic literacy in privacy and security," writes Professor Solove. "The Cardinals personnel might not have known that what they were doing was illegal—and I definitely bet they didn't know how severe the consequences could be. The Astros personnel didn't know some basic ways to protect data security."