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Rogue Tweeters in Government Could Be Prosecuted as Hackers

Posted on January 28, 2017 by Dissent

AP reports:

Who are the federal government’s rogue tweeters, using official agency social media accounts to poke President Donald Trump? Are these acts of civil disobedience, or federal crimes?

The online campaign began with unauthorized tweets – on subjects such as climate change inconsistent with Trump’s campaign statements and policies – that have been mostly deleted from official agency accounts.

[…]

The administration said the earlier Twitter actions involved tweets by unauthorized users – at least one was a former employee – who still had passwords for the agency accounts, including one case involving the account for the Redwoods National Park in California. Legal experts said the Justice Department could prosecute such tweeters under federal hacking laws, but the FBI so far was not involved.

Read more on Fifth Domain.

So it might be “protest speech” for former employees or current employees to use access to the Twitter accounts to post their remarks, but that doesn’t mean that it may not be “hacking” under the CFAA. Given how hypersensitive the current administration is to any criticism, will they pursue hacking charges at some point?

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