While it's not unknown for Congress to get a little overzealous where it shouldn't in creating some legislation while remaining too lenient where it should be tougher, it's the new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that is making some stop and say, “Wait a minute.”

The Act, which is being voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee today, is meant to curb hacking, cybercrime and cyber-terrorism and toughen the penalties for such crimes. (Watch out, LulzSec and Anonymous, this one's apparently for you.)

However, the Atlantic Wire is pointing out today that some of the wording of the new law is so nebulous, it may end up catching, for example, people who take a moment to peek at their Facebook (News - Alert) status page at work, against their employer's rules, which under the terms of the new law, could become a felony.

“The problem is that a lot of routine computer use can exceed ‘authorized access,’” said The Wall Street Journal's Orin Kerr in an article. For example: violating Facebook's terms of agreement by letting your not-quite 13-year-old kid create an account, or violating an employer's terms of workplace computer use. So let's say your employer has rules against social networking at work. You take a moment to check out a photo of a friend's new baby – Awwww, how cute – and suddenly you're committing a felony?

Senators Patrick Patrick Leahy and Al Franken have expressed these concerns and voiced an opinion that the Obama administration may be going a little overboard into defining what cybercrime is reports eWeek. “We want you to concentrate on the real cyber-crimes, and not the minor things,” said Senator Leahy.

Various civil liberties groups have pointed out that the proposal could impose civil and criminal penalties for people who access protected computers within the company without proper authorization, reports eWeek. Several other groups, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the American Civil Liberties Union, The Electronic Fronteri Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform have also objected, in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying violations of terms of service or computer use policies are not computer crimes and should not be treated as such.

“Our primary concern – that this will lead to overbroad application of the law – is far from hypothetical,” the groups wrote.