No area of criminal law and procedure is undergoing more dramatic change, and more exciting developments, than computer crime law. The fifth edition of Kerr's popular text has the latest cutting-edge material, including many updates since the fourth edition in 2017. New cases and materials address the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Van Buren v. United States and Carpenter v. United States; new statutes such as the Cloud Act and state laws on nonconsensual pornography; and the latest lower court circuit splits on compelled decryption, the border search exception, private searches of computers, and e-mail scanning. The chapters on computer misuse, the Fourth Amendment, and international evidence collection have been substantially rewritten and reorganized to reflect the latest case law.
The book covers every aspect of criminal law in the digital age, and it is presented in an engaging and accessible style. Topics range from computer fraud laws and international computer crimes to Internet surveillance laws and the Fourth Amendment. It is part traditional casebook, part treatise. It both straightforwardly explains the law and presents many exciting and new questions of law that courts are only now beginning to consider. The book is ideally suited either for a 3-credit course or a 2-credit seminar. It will appeal both to criminal law professors and those interested in cyberlaw or law and technology. No advanced knowledge of computers and the Internet is required or assumed.
Computer crime law has become an increasingly important area of criminal practice, and this book provides the ideal introduction to the field. Many U.S. Attorney's Offices have dedicated computer crime units, as have many state Attorney General offices. Any student with a background in this emerging area of law will have a leg up on the competition. Students will also find the book easy and fun to read, while professors will appreciate the accessible introduction to an important new field with many open questions for legal scholars.
The materials are authored by Orin Kerr, of UC Berkeley Law School, who is widely recognized as the leading academic authority on the law of computer crime.
