Lets see what the political luddites have come up with
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/30/uk_cybercrime_overhaul/Updates to the ageing Computer Misuse Act (CMA) finally come into force in England and Wales on Wednesday (1 October).
Modifications to the CMA - which was enacted in 1990 before the advent of the interweb - were included in the Police and Justice Act 2006. These changes were then themselves amended by the Serious Crime Act 2007. In order to avoid confusion the government decided to apply these changes all at once, through a (delayed) legislative order that comes into effect on 1 October.
The amendments cover three main provisions.
The maximum penalty for unauthorised access to a computer system (the least serious of three hacking offences covered in the original act) has been raised from six months to two years in prison, making the offence serious enough that an extradition request can be filed.
Denial of service attacks, previously something of a legal grey area, are now clearly criminal, with a maximum penalty of up to ten years behind bars. The amended act makes it an offence to distribute hacking tools for criminal purposes.
It does seem as though those who have asked for these laws are more sci-fi fans than those more familiar with the effects of cyber crime.
Whilst they may look great on paper its likely they will have little effect on the perpetrators of such crimes who are often outside the jurisdiction of these laws, its more likey without access to hacker/research tools we will see a stagnation in critical research and an increase in luddite style shoot the messenger activity, we can of course hope that one day politicians will face the fact that by their actions in trying to hide flaws and holes in critical systems instead of resolving them, they are doing the UK public no favours.
The good news is now of course that we can ask for randy saaf and his idiot cyber gang to be extradited if they attack the wpn any further
