Although he was aware that the FBI was already seeking a warrant to search Heckenkamp's computer in order to serve the FBI’s law enforcement needs, Savoy believed that the university's separate security interests required immediate action. Just as requiring a warrant to investigate potential student drug use would disrupt operation of a high school ... requiring a warrant to investigate potential misuse of the university's computer network would disrupt the operation of the university and the network that it relies upon in order to function. Moreover, Savoy and the other network administrators generally do not have the same type of "adversarial relationship" with the university’s network users as law enforcement officers generally have with criminal suspects.

This case is going to have widespread ramifications. Overall I'm pretty unhappy with this conclusion and I think this will be abused left and right in ways these judges wouldn't have intended or approved of.

There is a wide varience in competence among system's administrators, particularly between different Universities. Technical schools that have complex networks tend to attract smart people to their IT staffs who could probably handle this deputization responsibly. However, smaller schools with less interesting technology tend to have less competent admins... People who have difficulty understanding the difference between a security breach, and someone doing something with the network that they don't understand or haven't explicitly approved, but isn't a security breach. I suspect that some of these people will take an unreasonably broad view of their powers under this ruling.

(The same thing can also be said of private computer network administrators, who might also be deputized by this. Its not clear whether this ruling would fit outside the context of a University. It might.)

In general, people had always assumed that retalitory hacking was illegal. Here, the 9th has actually managed to make the wild west of the Internet a little bit wilder. I think ultimately that undermines the purpose that the Court is supposed to be serving. I hope this goes up to the SCOTUS.

9th Circuit Appeals Courth Authorizes University Admins to Hack Student Computers