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?

[megaditto]

These laws are just retarded knee jerk reactions[...] Not really. These laws are an inevitable consequence of the European/Socialist system, and are thus a mere harbinger of the darker things to come.

Please understand that things like this are inevitable when the government is tasked to act in the name of the Greater Common Good. 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.
What's next? Ban on monogamy, people with high IQ, witty remarks, hard work and study, Christianity, charity and honesty.

God I miss the good old times when our Government was given a set of very limited rights, and explicitly forbidden to fuck with anything except the foreign countries or the interstate commerce.