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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.
Was I first? Its gunna be close!
For things like remote desktop quite a lot for work and home. I imagine that the legislation applies only to property you do not own, much in the same way as someone (past resident etc) could quite legally have a key to your house, it's just when they use it they get in trouble.
Just hope they don't get too draconian with it.
Don't visit the United Gulag.
P.S.: Fuck Blair AND Bush.
Cheers.
MI5 (CIA of the UK) have been working on a custom trojan for the last year or so. I wonder how this will affect them? Are they above the law?
Yes, it's got nothing to do with the fact that geography happened to put them on an island.
Centuries ago they got pissed off at the Europeans so they dug a large trench, creating the English Channel and generating some islands for themselves in the process.