As an employer or manager, have you ever collected a resigning employee’s employer-owned laptop or cellphone and discovered that the employee left a personal email account automatically logged in? Did you have the urge to look at what the employee was doing and who the employee was talking to right before resigning? Perhaps to see if he or she was talking to your competitors or customers? If so, you should resist that urge.
The federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701, et seq., is a criminal statute that makes it an offense to “intentionally access[ ]without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided[ ]and thereby obtain[ ] . . . access to a[n] . . . electronic communication while it is in electronic storage . . . .” It also creates a civil cause of action for victims of such offenses, remedied by (i) actual damages of at least $1,000; (ii) attorneys’ fees and court costs; and, potentially, (iii) punitive damages if the access was willful or intentional.
