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Tougher Hacking Laws Get Support in UK
rainbowhawk writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that new laws outlining harsher punishments for computer crimes are gaining support in the UK. From the article: "The move follows campaigning from Labour MP Tom Harris, whose ideas are now being adopted in the Police and Justice Bill. There will be a clearer outlawing of offenses like denial-of-service attacks in which systems are debilitated."
Look at Part 5, sections 34 and 35 of this
Just FYI, we don't currently have degrees of murder here in the UK. If you commit murder, the only sentence available to the judge is life. (This is one reason why guilty of manslaughter is often the verdict returned instead; manslaughter carries the widest range of possible sentences of any crime in the UK.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Let's face it, everyone, literally everyone, who is in the security biz today, from 'net security to virus analysis has some kind of record. Either a public one or (if he's good) at least one that didn't get public. But everyone has scratched and sniffed at a server or two.
8 .stm) if it's ok to hack boxes without permission.
I do not see how you get from "scratching and sniffing" to a record. I, along with most reputable security folks, spend a large amount of my personal income on equipping my lab so I can try things out without doing it on other people's servers and networks. The idea that to gain experience you have to break the law is absurd, it is a bit like saying to be a chef you have to have tried poisoning people!
The fact is that it is against the law to tamper with, or to attempt to tamper with computer equipment that does not belong to you. The end result of posts like this is a simple law becomes confused with faux moral claims like "I was experimenting" or even worse "I was testing it to try and help the owner". Ask Dan Cuthbert (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/431700
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
A loose but credible reading of the above seems to cover every mainstream operating system, every compiler or interpreter, every text editor, every communications tool, and more.
What? No it doesn't. Read it again:
At what point does Microsoft make an operating system designed or adapted to commit an offence?
At what point do Microsoft intend for Windows to be used to commit an offence?
I'm not too keen on british law, so I was hoping someone would correct me. That's pretty frightening, if the definition is the same across the pond (deliberate, premeditated homicide). So a mafia killing is treated the same as say, a father murdering the kid-next-door who was messing around with his daughter?
Well... the thing is that in British law, life doesn't mean life.
I'm not an expert, but my citizen's understanding of it is that the judge also sets a tariff, which is a number of years after which you are eligible for release, if you can convince a parole board that you've reformed and won't offend again. After release, you remain on parole for the rest of your life - if at any time you commit another crime, or if at any time it is suspected that you have begun to pose a threat to society again, then you can be recalled to prison very easily.
Obviously in the very worst cases (serial killers and the like) the judge will set a whole-life tariff, which really does mean life in prison. But a case that in America would be second-degree murder, translates in Britain to "life" with a tariff of 10-20 years, after which it is possible for a rehabilitated offender to be released and to rebuild some semblance of a life.
Personally I think murder is murder. But that's not the view of the British public and things may change.
Actually, I think it is the view of the British public but not mine. Here are two examples of murder that I strongly believe shouldn't have a mandatory life sentence:
1. Assisted suicide: the prosecuting authorities almost never bring a charge of murder but there would be no defence if they did.
2. Gross provocation: the whole business of pleading not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter "on the grounds of diminished responsibility" unnecessarily medicalises cases. Battered wife cases often fall into this category, as does the Tony Martin case.