Charges loom for employee who deleted Trump’s Twitter account

Despite some onlookers calling him — or her — a hero, the anonymous Twitter employee who pulled the plug on President Donald Trump’s Twitter account Thursday night before leaving the company may want to lawyer up, according to experts on computer law.

Whether or not Twitter pursues legal action against its former worker, federal officials could be motivated to prosecute — if only to deter future cases, analysts say.

“If I were this employee, I’d be hiring a good criminal defense lawyer who knows something about the CFAA,” said Paul Ohm, a law professor at Georgetown University.

The CFAA — short for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — is the federal government’s premiere anti-hacking law.

It gives the government wide latitude to pursue those who have allegedly accessed a computer “without authorization” or in ways that exceed the level of authorization they’ve been given.

“If this was beyond what the employee was authorized to do, one could argue he ‘exceeded authorized access,’ ” said Chris Calabrese, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Under one theory, the worker may not have violated the CFAA if Twitter’s internal policies on the matter were lax or nonexistent.

But the employee could be in much greater jeopardy if Twitter’s policies were much more strict.

Benjamin Wittes, an expert on surveillance and law enforcement policy, said he agrees with information security practitioners — the former Twitter employee is not safe.