Law / United States / 
Florida
Florida Computer-Related Crime Act (dual without-authorization and exceeding-authorization prongs)
In force since .
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not assume Florida's exceeding-authorization prong is read as narrowly as the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)'s; Van Buren v. United States construed only the federal statute.
- A conviction under section 815.06 also opens the way to a civil action for compensatory damages by the owner or lessee of the computer, computer system, computer network, device, or data under section 815.06(5), and the court may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a person who retrieves data from an openly served website act "without authorization" under Fla. Stat. section 815.06(2)(a) when the site's terms of use forbid automated collection?
- Does automated collection from a site that grants public access but limits request rates or excludes crawlers make the "manner of use" one that "exceeds authorization" under Fla. Stat. section 815.06(2)(a)?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 815.06 punishes willful, knowing access to a computer, computer system, network or electronic device without authorization or exceeding authorization, and related disruption, damage, contaminant and surveillance offenses, with a civil action for compensatory damages against a person convicted. It requires no log or record. Subsection (8) deems a person who causes access in one jurisdiction from another jurisdiction to have accessed in both, but names no state, so it states no territorial hook.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Section 815.06(2) provides that a person commits an offense if he or she willfully, knowingly, and without authorization or exceeding authorization accesses or causes access to any computer, computer system, computer network, or electronic device with knowledge that such access is unauthorized or the manner of use exceeds authorization, among other prohibited acts such as denial of service, destruction of data, and introduction of malware.
Section 815.06(5)(a) also lets the owner or lessee of the computer, computer system, computer network, computer program, computer equipment or supplies, electronic device, or computer data bring a civil action for compensatory damages against a person convicted under the section.
The section originates in ch. 78-92 (1978) and was last amended by section 40 of ch. 2019-167, which took effect , so its current text dates to that amendment's commencement rather than to the 1978 original.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web.
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