UK Law May Criminalize IT Pros

An anonymous reader writes "More worrying news from the UK. This time, a bill meant to fight cybercrime may make it illegal to use or make available network security tools available, just because they could be used by hackers." From the article: "Clayton cited the Perl scripting language, created by Larry Wall in 1987, as an example of a useful technology that could fall foul of the law. 'Perl is almost universally used on a daily basis to permit the Internet to function,' said Clayton. 'I doubt if there is a sysadmin on the planet who hasn't written a Perl program at some time or another. Equally, almost every hacker who commits an offense under section 1 or section 3 of the CMA will use Perl as part of their toolkit. Unless Larry is especially stupid, and there is very little evidence for that, he will form the opinion that hackers are likely to use his Perl system. Locking Larry up is surely not desirable.'" A note that this is equally confusing but separate from yesterday's story about the UK government wanting private encryption keys.

Comments

Do I see a pattern?

[alx5000]

From the country that criminalized privacy:

Let's convict Perl users.

I also heard that something called TPC or TCP is widely used by hax0rs to pwn remote servers. Wait till the UK Government can get their hands on it...

Re:Do I see a pattern?

[Tackhead]

> From the country that criminalized privacy:
>
>Let's convict Perl users.

First they came for the COBOL programmers, and I was silent,
Because ADD KEYSTROKES TO SYNTAX GIVING OBFUSCATION was always lame.
They they came for the BASIC programmers, and I was silent,
Because I considered GOTO harmful,
Then they came for the C++ programmers, and I was silent,
Because I could still write FORTRAN in any language,
Then they came for the Perl programmers, and now the only way I can win an obfuscated programming contest is to write it in APL.

(First they ignore you, then they fight you, then they mock you, then they come for the Brainf*ck programmers and their heads explode.)

Using Perl Should Be A Crime

[Geldon]

... Or at least forcing someone to debug it should

Re:Using Perl Should Be A Crime

[Darby]

Come on now, that joke is getting really stale.

Seriously, who can't tell at a glance what this does just isn't paying attention:

#!/usr/bin/perl
                        +
                       @A=
                      (25,0
                     );@B=(0
                    ,24   +0)
                   ;@C=( 49,24
                  );@X=($")x(40
                 +9)         ;@_
                =(@X,       $/)x(
               25);$_[     $A[1*1]
              *50   +$A   [0]   ]=q
             /./;+ $_[$B [1*1] *1*50
            +$B[0]]=qq/./;$_[$C[1]*50
           +$C                     [0]
          ]="."                   ;@X=(
         $C[0*0]                 ,$C [1]
        );1   *1*               1*1   *1;
       while (394>             (join $",@_
      )=~y/.//){do{           $R=3*rand;@X=
     (((         int         (($         {(A
    ,B,C)       [$R]}       [0*0]       +$X[0
   ])/2+.5     )),int(     (${(A,B     ,C)[$R]
  }[1   *1]   +$X   [1]   )/2   +.5   +0)   ))}
while $_[$Z =$X[1 ]*50+ $X[0] +0]=~ /\./; $_[$Z
]=".";+system$^O=~/[wW]in/?"cls":"clear";pr int@_}

Re:it's the nature of these tools

[Jazzer_Techie]

I think the issue is that Perl code can be classified as a form of encryption.

Re:it's the nature of these tools

[lukas84]

Oh, they are quite familiar with listening.