Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf
Page Number: 30

6 

VAN BUREN v. UNITED STATES 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

ing authority to use it in a particular way, uses it in a dif-
ferent way.”  8 C. J. S., Bailments §43, pp. 480–481 (2017) 
(footnote  omitted).  A  computer  technician  may  have  au-
thority to access a celebrity’s computer to recover data from
a crashed hard drive, but not to use his access to copy and 
leak to the press photos stored on that computer.  

The majority makes no attempt to square its interpreta-
tion with this familiar principle.  Instead, it sweeps away 
this context by stating that Congress did not include in this 
statute any common-law terms.  Ante, at 8, n. 4.  But the 
statute  does  use  words  like  “exceed”  and  “authority”  that
are common to other property contexts.  And the majority 
never  identifies  any  particular  property-law  buzzwords 
that it thinks Congress was obliged to include. 

The majority next says that relying on pre-existing con-
cepts of property law is “ill advised” because Congress en-
acted  this  law  in  light  of  a  “failure  of  pre-existing  law  to
capture  computer  crime.”    Ante,  at  2,  8,  n. 4  (citing  Kerr,
Cybercrime’s Scope: Interpreting “Access” and “Authoriza-
tion” in Computer Misuse Statutes, 78 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 1596 
(2003)).  Yet the reasons why pre-existing law was consid-
ered inadequate undermine the majority’s position.  First, 
state laws were used to cover conduct like Van Buren’s, but 
doing so “require[d] considerable creativity” because those
laws  typically  required  either  “physical”  entry  (which  fit
poorly with computers) or “depriv[ing]” a victim of property
(which fit poorly where a person “merely copied” data or en-
gaged  in  forbidden  “personal  uses”).    Id.,  at  1607–1608, 
1610–1611.  Second, the fit was even more awkward for fed-
eral laws, which were “more limited in scope.”  Id., at 1608. 
Congress did not enact this law to eliminate the established 
principle  that  entitlements  to  use  property  are  circum-
stance specific, but instead to eliminate the deprivation and 
physical-entry requirements.    

Unable to square its interpretation with established prin-