Germany Declares Hacking Tools Illegal

dubbelj writes "Germany has updated their computer crime law to declare 'hacking tools' illegal. This will place most of the professionals in the network admin and computer security fields in a sort of legal grey area. 'The new rules tighten up the existing sanctions and prohibit any unauthorized user from disabling or circumventing computer security measures to access secure data (see the law, sections 200 and following [in German]). Manufacturing, programming, installing, or spreading software that can circumvent security measures is verboten, which means that some security scanning tools might become illegal.' We discussed a similar measure in January when Australia considered the same kind of legislation. How will this affect Linux distribution in Germany, as most standard Linux distributions come with these kind of 'hacking tools' installed by default?"

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How did the US do it?

[TopSpin]

Just read through most of the >0 posts. Admitted I read fast but usually it doesn't take much effort to pick out the posts that explain precisely how this was caused by the US. I assume it was; practically anything that lands on the evil side of the TruthDot ledger is satisfactorily explained by some US policy. Lemme go back and read so more...