The CFAA has nothing to do with stealing cable or tapping phones, both of which existed (and were almost certainly illegal) before the CFAA and before digital cable or digital phone systems.<p>Regarding buying random phone numbers, I&#x27;d say again, analogies are only useful to demonstrate the existence of an area of law in which something is legal or illegal, but not useful for designing in detail the laws governing digital&#x2F;networked activities.  There&#x27;s not a sufficient parallel to make any decisions based on any analogy to a previous situation or technology; there&#x27;s only enough parallel to prevent closing off the discussion of making privacy violations illegal by saying &quot;it&#x27;s not&quot;.