Should the FBI be involved when the Pats deflate some footballs? That cheat cost some team tens of millions of dollars. I don't think so. I think it's for the NFL to decide.

> Should the FBI be involved when the Pats deflate some footballs?

Is there a federal law that makes doing that a federal crime, and, if so, is there not a federal law enforcement agency besides the FBI that has been designated to exclusively enforce the applicable law?

If yes to both of those, then, sure, there is a good case for the FBI getting involved, because its their job. Otherwise, no, they, shouldn't, because its not.

I think we're on two different wavelengths here. When I say that the FBI shouldn't be involved, I'm not saying that a subordinate should disobey orders to enforce the law. I'm not saying that they are not legally within their right to do so. This is morality. And morality is deeper than blindly obeying legal statutes.

I'm saying that the act of transforming an everyday action into a federal crime just because unauthorized computer access was involved is a horrible, dangerous system for us to have.

The everyday action in this case would be akin to someone breaking into a rival company's headquarters, trespassing, and stealing secrets. Sounds like an action that's worthy of federal criminality to me.

Well the NFL did decide that on their own, because they were able to figure out what happened internally. In this case, the MLB was unable to determine who compromised the Astros' network. So it would be completely appropriate for the MLB to seek out side help. Since, as noted in the article, their assumption was that some hacker penetrated their network, they called the FBI.

why does the size of the organisations make a difference?

Because typically the FBI only investigates crimes where damages are potentially over a million dollars (or cases like kidnapping, murder etc. that cross state lines)

This was across state lines so it is automatically the FBI's jurisdiction