blankBrittany Bromell

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Cyberstalking via Electronic Tracking Device

Most of us, at one point or another, have dedicated a day of the week to running our personal errands. That day might consist of going to the grocery store, shopping at the mall, or grabbing coffee with a friend. Now imagine on the way home from any of those activities, you get this notification on your iPhone:

You don’t own an AirTag or probably don’t even know what it is, but it doesn’t take long for you to realize that you’re being tracked. Recently, this has happened to unsuspecting people in Virginia and Arkansas.

While there have not yet been any reported instances in North Carolina, our cyberstalking statute prohibits this type of nonconsensual tracking. This post explores the cyberstalking offense as proscribed by G.S. 14-196.3.

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An Overview of 2021 Criminal Law Legislation

Each year the School of Government summarizes legislation enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly affecting criminal law and procedure and motor vehicle laws. We also explore selected legislation in more depth on this blog. Most criminal law legislation has an effective date of December 1 to allow the courts to prepare for the changes. What follows is a brief summary of the criminal law and related legislation with earlier effective dates enacted thus far during the 2021 legislative session. It isn’t everything the legislature has done, and by no means is it everything you need to know.

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New Publication on Computer Crimes

I’m happy to announce that I recently finished an Administration of Justice Bulletin about computer-related crimes. It is a substantial expansion of my recent blog posts on the subject, providing an overview of how the statutes have been applied and some criminal scenarios that may fall within their purview. The bulletin is available here as … Read more

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“Authorization” in the Context of Computer Crimes

I previously wrote a blog post about North Carolina’s computer-related crime statutes. Two of our computer crimes are accessing computers under G.S. 14-454 and accessing government computers under G.S. 14-454.1. Both statutes prohibit willfully accessing computers for the purpose of committing fraud or obtaining property or services by false pretenses. Both statutes also prohibit unauthorized access to computers, regardless of fraudulent intent. G.S. 14-453 defines authorization as having the consent or permission of the owner—or of the person licensed or authorized by the owner to grant consent or permission—to access a computer, computer system, or computer network in a manner not exceeding the consent or permission. I’ve gotten several questions recently about the scope of unauthorized access under these statutes, and today’s post examines how these laws may be applied.

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