[Gllug] Uh oh, govt attempting to regulate "hacking"

[Dan Stevens (IAmAI)]

Laws should punish intent and damage caused as a result of actions,
not for simply hacking, which is an extreemly broad term, which is
interpretted in a variety of ways by different people.

On 08/03/06, Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 09:25:25PM +0000, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> > Not to me. It seems to make it illegal to put nmap on your website and
> > say "use this to crack someone's security".
> >
> > I think there are some flaws in the Computer Misuse Act but I think this
> > provision - which makes the distribution of rootkits illegal - is not
> > one of them
>
> Don't get me wrong here - I'd really like to see a strong law which
> explictly mentions online extortion and fraud in the same breath as
> going to prison for a very long time with an overfriendly cellmate
> called bubba.  It'd be nice if it also acknowledged that much of this
> crime comes at us from overseas and set up ways to coordinate with
> foreign police forces.
>
> Preventing people from distributing semi-legit tools like nmap, and
> illegit tools like rootkits -- well, not preventing them because
> they'll be distributed anyway -- is just security through obscurity.
> I have _no worries_ whatsoever about sites in Russia offering Linux
> worms and rootkits to the world, since those toolkits can then be
> analysed and whatever bugs they're exploiting can be fixed.
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
> Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
> Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com
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