Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - A tool with Criminal & Civil Consequences

The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act provides criminal and civil penalties for wrongfully accessing a computer to do harmful things [maybe some of the hard drive damage done by some of Postmus' assessor buds triggers liability under this law??]
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While the CFAA has been used by companies against departing company employees who improperly delete, alter or take information, the CFAA also can apply when companies access competitors' websites to for competitive benefit in violation of websites' terms of service, creating fictitious profiles to snoop about what people are doing online or wrongfully access people's paid online subscription services [wonder if this may include Mitzelfelt's accessing county records to generate a label list for his political mailers while a sitting county supervisor?].
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CFAA §1030(g) provides for a civil remedy and requires a $5,000 loss. In addition to compensatory damages, the injured plaintiff can seek injunctive relief or other equitable relief. The statute appears short (losses within one year of the action's filing)
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A "loss" counting toward the $5,000 threshold under CFAA is not stolen intellectual property, regardless of its value, nor are privacy invasions and/or personally identifiable information, regardless of how valuable. The "damage" must be a "cost"
to the victim like the costs to investigate, respond or remedy the damage the violation caused to the data or computer, any interruption of service, any fees a computer forensics firm charges to secure the violated computer or to investigate the damage caused to the computer and restore lost or damaged data.
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A nice link and more detailed treatment of the statute and tactics is found at http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202537182389&rss=cc as is the email address of the attorney in Texas who wrote the infomative article.
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Definitely a "thinking-out-of-the-box" tool.