State v. Allen was a 1996 decision of the Kansas Supreme Court regarding what constitutes the unlawful access of a computer system. The court upheld the decision of the trial court, finding that the state had failed to show probable cause that the defendant, Anthony A. Allen, had unlawfully accessed the computer systems of the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.
Background
Eighteen-year-old Anthony Allen had programmed his computer to wardial phone numbers to determine which were simply voice lines and which had modems attached to them. Some of the numbers he dialed, and subsequently disconnected from, included computers owned by Southwestern Bell. These were numbers which were thought to be known only to Bell employees and their associates. However, although Allen succeeded in identifying numbers with attached modems, no evidence was provided that he attempted to make any attempt to get past the system's login screens which required a username and password.
A Kansas trial court found that a preliminary hearing had failed to show probable cause that Allen had unlawfully accessed Southwestern Bell's computer systems. Because probable cause was not established the defendant was released without going to trial. The state then appealed the trial court's decision to the Kansas Supreme Court, asking them to rule on "the question of whether a person's telephonic connections that prompt a computer owner to change its security systems constitute felony computer crime in violation of K.S.A. 21-3755(b)."
Decision
The Kansas Supreme Court's decision answered two separate questions. The first was in regard to whether the trial court erred in ruling there was not sufficient evidence that Allen had gained "access" to Southwestern Bell's computers. The second question was whether the trial court had erred in ruling that there was no evidence to show that Allen had damaged any computer, or any other property.
On the question of access
The first question that the State Supreme Court set out to answer regarded the question of "access", and how it is defined in Kansas state law. Specifically, from the ruling, "Did the trial court err in ruling there was insufficient evidence to show Allen gained "access" to Southwestern Bell's computers?" This question came about because of the trial court's decision that there was not probable cause to believe Allen had committed the crime he was charged with.
The prosecution had alleged that since K.S.A. 21-3755(a)(1), defined access as "to approach, instruct, communicate with, store data in, retrieve data from, or otherwise make use of any resources of a computer, computer system or computer network", by dialing the Bell's number and connecting to it Allen had "approached" Bell's computer system, thereby committing a crime. The Supreme Court rejected this idea, stating that the intent of the statute was to criminalize the misuse of a computer system by "gaining or attempting to gain access" to it. Since Allen had disconnected from the systems he connected to without trying to enter a password he had not attempted to gain access to them and therefore committed no offense. Furthermore, the Supreme Court pointed out that, as noted by the Department of Justice, if merely approaching a computer was regarded as an offense then anyone who walked near a computer could be charged with a crime; this effectively rendered the "access" notion void for vagueness.