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

Re:No shit.

[A beautiful mind]

"Face it, folks, the US will go the way Britain is going"

Actually, I can't decide if the UK is going on the way the US is going, or the other way around and that fact itself is quite scary.

Re:it's the nature of these tools

[rolfwind]

It's like outlawing chainsaws because they can hurt people, or forks and knives, etcetera. Some countries/areas already outlaw certain knives while allowing other, potentially just as deadly knives (chef's knives) to be carried around.

That's not to say, certain items should never be outlawed (nuclear/radioactive material), but with a proposed banning the legitimate uses have to be considered along with the illegitimate uses -- would a ban be more effective than simply punishing the specific people who harm others?

But I have a feeling that a politician/joe_public hear about hackers/programming and react reflexively without knowing much about the issue.

Re:Compilers and Debuggers?

[richieb]

I recomend you read the essay The Right To Read for a possible future.

Re:it's the nature of these tools

[Mistshadow2k4]

Hmmm, I have to respectfully disagree. Guns are made to be able to kill, whether in self-defense or not. This proposed law is more like outlawing surgeon's knives because Jack the Ripper (supposedly) used one, never mind that surgeons use them to save lives; network tools are used to hack networks but are also used to secure them. That's the most apt comparison I can think of.

What is going on in the UK?!

[lawpoop]

I'm a United States citizen. While I am horrified about what's been going on currently in the US, it doesn't really suprise me, given our history as the self-appointed Savior of Europe after WWII, defender against communism, the Vietnam war, etc.

With our two-party political system, both parties have to pander to their base, which, to simplify a lot, is socialists for the Democrats and facists for the Republicans. Now that the republicans are in ascendancy, I'm not surprised that corporate power is going unchecked, and those who don't believe in government are unable to govern competently. After 9/11 burst our bubble that oceans would protect us from what's going on in the rest of the world, and the fact that we're waging a 'war on terror' that will never end, I'm not surprised that people would become fanatical and fall in line behind a militaristic administration.

However, what the hell is going on in Great Britain that gives political cover for this radical infringement into the rights and privacy of the people? Didn't the U.K. defeat Facism that threatened to overrun the country? Hasn't the UK been fighting terrorism from Ireland relatively sanely for decades? Doesn't the parliamentary system give *some* power to other policital groups which are somewhat left-leaning?

Re:What is going on in the UK?!

[mickwd]

This may sound a little partisan and controversial, but the problem is basically Tony Blair.

Since coming to power, he's increasingly become a control freak.

He's emasculated the house of lords, under cover of "reform", while seemingly trying to block the option (favoured by many MPs) of a largely-elected house of lords (because a largely-elected second chamber would be a legitimate "check and balance" on his authority, as compared to a set of nominated place-men). (See for example here).

He's also marginalised parliament - his government carries out the minimum of "debate" there now, merely using it as the place to anounce previously-decided policies. There was a big fuss recently, little reported, about the government trying to pass a law allowing them to change legislation at will, without any debate at all, under cover of "reducing red tape" (see here.

Even within the cabinet, he seems to fire anyone who seems remotely a threat or who disagrees with him in any way (with the exception of Gordon Brown, the chancellor (and probably the next Labour leader), who is powerful enough to be left alone).

Since he's been prime minister, there have been dozens of crime bills, making hundreds of new criminal offences (e.g. see here.

He's increasingly making noises about the criminal justice system being "out of touch" (i.e. not automatically just doing what he says), in a seeming bid to further curtail their powers. For what he's already achieved, see, for example, here.

He himself is becoming increasingly irrational and out-of-touch to the extent where his party are starting to think of him as a liability, let alone what the country now thinks of him. The more out of touch he gets, the determined to get his own way he becomes. He's done a lot or damage to this country's constitutional processes, a lot of damage to its reputation (via Iraq), and the sooner he goes, the better.

from the UK

[ElephanTS]

I grew up in the 70s in London when the IRA were fairly routinely blowing stuff up. At no stage did anyone suggest compulsory ID to deal with this. Mainly the bins were taken off the trains and eventually a 'ring-of-steel' (meaning police checkpoints at increased presence) around the City Of London (our Wall St). Then somehow by the end of nineties we had become the most surveilled people on Earth.

Post 911 the talk of terrorism never went away. And then 7/7 came along and the paranoia and suspicion just went sky-high. Now we too lived in a country where any change of law could be carried off with the mere mention of the T-word. (Either that or the other one, the P-word, the Glitter-crime). This year Blair has is own little version of the Patriot act coming into force, one where he can issue laws without recourse to Parliament as long as they don't include tax increases or a prison penalty greater than 24 months.

Electronic sniffers are be trialed on a few parts of the underground smelling for explosive traces and there is a scheme in planning for a countrywide network of number plate recognition cameras recording all vehicles on a gigantic DB. Most London Transport users use RFID (oyster) in replacement for the old tickets and all this data is recorded. We will have RFID national ID soon at a cost of around £90 per person, compulsory. I could go on but here's a link or two to go on with.

http://www.no2id.net/

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/

So, as Orwell (real name: Eric Blair) predicted, we really are heading for a BB state. It's obvious that the UK is the USs puppy dog and we are in the 'endless' war just as long as you are. Really the UK is just another state of the USA. Maybe even quite a powerful and important one at that.

There is a saying in England "Watch America that's what here will be like in 10 years time" - now it seems we've just about caught up or even exceeded what's going on in the US.

Re:criminalizing possession

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyone else think we'd have better lawmakers if we plucked some names at random from the phone book?"

No, because half the people picked would have a less than average IQ. If you've worked in customer service, you know what I'm talking about.

The unwashed masses are even more clueless than their representatives. Which is why we get clueless representatives. Blind leading the blind, and all that. If only the blind would elect someone who was deaf, instead of blind..

Re:it's the nature of these tools

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how British law works!

If software is made available to the world at large (legal mumbo-jumbo: "an invitation to treat") with a legitimate use than no offense has been committed. It's only if the software developer either:
         

• writes software which has no conceivable legitimate use (this would have to be very specifically malicous software, probably pre-set to target a particular network - like some modern viruses do),

         

• makes their legitimate software specifically available to someone who they suspect will carry out an attack,

then they have commited an offense. To put in plain english:
If a car company makes a car and sells it to the world at large, which is then purchased by bank robbers to commit a robbery, then the car maker has done no wrong. But, if the car maker either i) makes a car named "Getaway car 3000" with all the usual "wacky races" getaway gadgets and sells it or ii) sells their car to a group of people wearing ex-president masks and holding swag bags with dollar (or pound) signs on them, then they have possibly committed an offense (depending on the specifics of the case of course).