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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.
Yes, you're right.
However, keep in mind that people who live in the U.S. actually still have a lot of freedom in comparison to places like India.
It's worrisome because the U.S. is losing freedom while India is gaining freedom. But India is still far, far away from allowing people the freedom we have here. There is rampant corruption (corruption in the U.S. Congress is nothing compared to India) and overwhelming government control of business. Property rights (and other civil liberties) in India are not protected as much as they are in the U.S.
I see this as a situation where the governments in places like India let the people have a little freedom for a while to get the economy going, and then fall back into government control before the people ever have the level of freedom that exists in the U.S. today.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
The express purpose of guns, with the exception of hunting rifles, is to shoot people. (Hint: you don't use handguns or automatic weapons to hunt deer.) Many people buy these guns for their ability to shoot people, even if they *never* intend to use it in that capacity.
Shooting people isn't always a crime; some people just need to be shot. Like the meth addict performing his latest home invasion.