The defendant appealed his conviction for the unlawful interception of communications, saying that he was authorised to access the information he had obtained. He had instructed a junior employee to access emails by the use of an ID and password given to him by another senior employee.
Held: The appeal failed. The judge had taken from the Allison case that ‘right to contol’ within the subsection meant more than merely a right to access or operate a system. It mean the right to authorise or forbid the operation or the use of the system. He was correct. The object of the Act would be undermined if anyone with a generalised right of access could use that authority to access materials as he wished. The civil protections provided by the Act were and insufficient remedy on their own.
Judges:
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers LCJ, Cresswelll J, Openshaw J
Citations:
[2006] EWCA Crim 258, [2006] 1 WLR 1554
Links:
Statutes:
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 1(2)
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Regina v Bow Street Magistrates ex parte Government of the United States of America; In re Allison HL 2-Sep-1999
A person within an organisation who was authorised to access some data on a computer system at a particular level, could exceed his authority by accessing data at a level outside that authority. The unauthorised access offence under the 1990 Act was . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 09 February 2022; Ref: scu.238336