[3] The House Committee Report to the original computer crime bill included a statement by a representative of GTE-owned Telenet that characterized the 1983 techno-thriller film WarGames—in which a young teenager (played by Matthew Broderick) from Seattle breaks into a U.S. military supercomputer programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war and unwittingly almost starts World War III—as "a realistic representation of the automatic dialing and access capabilities of the personal computer.

[5] DEF CON organizer and Cloudflare researcher Marc Rogers, Senator Ron Wyden, and Representative Zoe Lofgren stated opposition to this on the grounds it would make many regular internet activities illegal.

[6] In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in Van Buren v. United States to provide a narrow interpretation of the meaning of "exceeds authorized access".

These provisions have allowed private companies to sue disloyal employees for damages for the misappropriation of confidential information (trade secrets).

Prosecutors have used the CFAA to protect private business interests and to intimidate free-culture activists, deterring undesirable, yet legal, conduct.

[54] Professor of Law Ric Simmons notes that many provisions of the CFAA merely combine identical language to pre-existing federal laws with "the element of “access[ing] a protected computer without authorization, or [by] exceed[ing] authorized access,"[55] meaning that "the CFAA merely provides an additional charge for prosecutors to bring if the defendant used a computer while committing the crime.

"[56] Professor Joseph Olivenbaum has similarly criticized the CFAA's "computer-specific approach," noting both the risk of redundancy and resultant definitional problems.

[58] As per Star Kashman, an expert in cybersecurity law, the CFAA presents some challenges in cases related to Search Engine Hacking (also known as Google Dorking).

A simple way to correct this dangerous legal interpretation is to change the CFAA and the wire fraud statutes to exclude terms of service violations.

In the wake of the prosecution and subsequent suicide of Aaron Swartz (who used a script to download scholarly research articles in excess of what JSTOR terms of service allowed), lawmakers proposed amending the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

[62] In addition to Lofgren's efforts, Representatives Darrell Issa and Jared Polis (also on the House Judiciary Committee) raised questions in the immediate aftermath of Swartz's death regarding the government's handling of the case.