UK Moves to Outlaw 'Hacker Tools'

twitter writes "New guidance rules for the UK's controversial Computer Misuse Act do not allay fears of impracticality, or of the banning of legitimate IT software: 'The government has come through with guidelines that address some, but not all, of these concerns about dual-use tools. The guidelines establish that to successfully prosecute the author of a tool it needs to be shown that they intended it to be used to commit computer crime. But the Home Office, despite lobbying, refused to withdraw the distribution offense. This leaves the door open to prosecute people who distribute a tool, such as nmap, that's subsequently abused by hackers.'" Somewhat similar legislation recently became law in Germany.

Comments

Re:IDEs too?

[arevos]

These laws are an inevitable consequence of the European/Socialist system... Given all the pervious acts of socialists, hacking tool bans should be the least of your worries. In the past, Jews, Genetics and Cybernetics, Hate Speech, Overtime pay, Tobacco and Abortions all were deemed harmful. On the other hand:

• Those socialist Europeans countries manage to come top in terms of press freedoms and quality of life.
• Have more liberal laws on DRM, copyright infringment, drugs, abortions and stem cell research than the US.
• Have tougher privacy laws that limit what corporations and the government are legally allowed to do with your personal information.