An employees actions would be a matter of judgment between the company leadership and themsleves, I don't understand how it's a criminal matter. To the outside entity it's a business contract, to the company it's an internal matter if and how to deal with any specific activities of the employee.
> An employees actions would be a matter of judgment between the company leadership and themselves
There has been a few news articles (and court cases) where this question has been raised and it is not strict true. Employee actions are only actions for which the employee has been given as an task as part of their employment and role. Actions outside of that is private actions. When this end up in court, the role description and employee contract becomes very important.
A clear case example is when a doctor is looking up data on a patient. Downloading patient records from people who they are not the doctor for can be criminal and not just a breech of hospital policy, especially if they sell or transfer the data.
I was tempted to add this very line when I wrote my message but I hoped it would be obvious I don't mean things like illegally stealing private data. I was talking about things like "falsifying" data to the contractor, which doesn't seem like a crime to me just a contract violation.
If the employee are destroying property owned by the employer, for which is not part of the employee role or assignment, then they could be charged with hacking and property destruction just as if it was done by someone outside the company. The way around this that some people can attempt is work-to-rule strike. That would be a legal way to sabotage a contract without actually going beyond that of the employee contract.
Again I was thinking of things like submitting non-functional application or data, not obvious property crimes like destruction of property.
You're granting an employee a special status that doesn't exist. Imagine a random person working to undermine a contract between the government and a business, motivated by an effort to obstruct law enforcement from enforcing the law. I'm sure you'd agree that this would obviously be illegal - that doesn't change simply because the person happens to be working for the business in question.
And no I don't think it's illegal. You seem deeply confused, where is the "obstruction"? If there is obstruction there should be a specific court order and the parties involved, otherwise it's just business. Do you think say, telling a amazon delivery driver who's asking for the location of some address a bs route is illegal?
It's still not clear to me, where did I anywhere imply it's any different if a single individual or company is in question. I said it's a matter between the company and the employee because a company may dislike the employees actions and choose to deal with it eg by firing them, the contracting party isn't involved here. It still seems to me at most a matter of contract whether it's directly a single person being contracted or a person as part of a company.
If it's still not clear, I am saying my understanding is unless it is very specifically part of an investigation and involves the party in question, the entity whether an individual or a company is irrelevant, they are just as far as it seems to me engaging in a business deal.