United States v. Powers

Shaunna Briles gave the password to her America Online (AOL) email account to Chad Powers (defendant). Briles had previously emailed someone images of herself partially nude and in provocative poses. Powers used the password to access the past email messages in Briles’s account and, without Briles’s authorization, sent the images from Briles’s email account to individuals in Briles’s address book and to others. Briles contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and advised a special agent that three of the email messages were sent from her AOL email account and that her sister had received one of the messages on her work account. The agent received copies of the email messages and attached images from Briles’s sister’s supervisor. Analysis showed that the IP address from which the email messages originated was registered to Cox Communications. In response to a subpoena, Cox Communications confirmed that the IP address belonged to Powers. Powers was charged with intentionally exceeding authorized access to a computer and thereby obtaining information from a protected computer in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C). Powers moved to dismiss the CFAA count, arguing that Congress did not intend 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) to protect personal computers. At the evidentiary hearing on Powers’s motion, the manager of the computer systems of the federal public defenders’ office testified that email accounts store email messages and attachments on servers and that the images of Briles that Powers sent by email were located on the server and not on the hard drive of Powers’s personal computer.