Queen's Speech: Computer Misuse Act to be amended, tougher sentences planned

New Computer misuse act penalties

- Forcing a company to spend money to secure their system by publicizing a hole in there systems. 10 years.

- Making someone important look bad by guessing their email password. 20 years.

- Forgetting a laptop full of unencrypted personal data on the train. A brand new laptop.

"you'll know it when you see it"

there. that's all the wording you'll need for any of these laws. no need for costly legal consultations.

Computer Misuse Act needs more of an update than that

Bear in mind that it's 24 years old, i.e. it dates from an era when Internet access was still pretty exclusive. There are all kinds of things that need sharpening up in the modern connected world - unauthorized access comes to mind immediately.

Realistically you have to accept some form of implied consent for things like access to a public-facing website, but that in itself opens up another can of worms if there is some kind of vulnerability: if something is put up there inadvertently meaning you can access it when the company didn't intend you to be able to then rationally that's their problem. If on the other hand you create some pattern of input that triggers a bug that allows you to access something you shouldn't you're breaking the law. The precise boundary between the two is completely undefined.

Ideally you'd address that before it comes up in court. They're not going to so someone is going to either get convicted unfairly or get off when they shouldn't have. It's all clearly foreseeable now but it might need a bit of effort to actually fix it.

So

https everywhere

disconnect

DNSCrypt

VPN

TOR

Anything else I should add to my shopping list? The more they do stuff like this, the more I want to hide my online presence. I'm not doing anything illegal to my knowledge, but who knows. One day I might search for nirvana, have the picture of the naked baby pop up and BAM I'm behind bars.

Re. update

$Expletive that, the CMA needs tearing up entirely and rewriting from scratch.

To include "the use of digital media, computers or other electronic devices for spying on people by or on behalf of Governments", punishable by hanging by the teeth over a pot of hydrofluoric acid.

Also relevant, as worded there are no exemptions for historical works of art, so expect possession of digital pictures of many Greek statues or Michaelangelo's "David" to be criminalized under the new laws.

"But your Honour, the picture is of someone who not only died over 400 years ago but a statue".. 40 years. NEXT!!!...

(makes preparations to move somewhere more sensible, maybe North Korea)..

Paedophile Manuel?

Yet another 70s icon's shame revealed, made the worse after all that phew Rory when those bell ends phoned his granddaughter.

It's about time

It's about time that Blighty get in touch with reality and digital crime. So far crims in the UK have gotten just a slap on the wrist. Japan's 2 year prison sentence minimum for pirates plus fines and 10 years plus fines for facilitators should be adopted world wide. Hackers should get a minimum of 10 years plus treble damages.

I guess the Bible would be included

hostname:~ username$ man paedophilia

No manual entry for paedophilia.

Well, that's a relief!

so everything else is working away well to start focusing on such small issues?

I just wonder if the rest of the UK, its economy, the populations health and well being is all in check and we are now birds of paradise with nothing else better to focus on ?

I mean for a start I was watching the news (bbc news the other day) when Cameroon said the nation has been in a 7 year recession - I was gob smacked this is considering the BBC has done nothing but to brush the recession under the carpet. They have never labelled it as the recession and always looked at the problem from a global point of view rather than a local point of view.

The health service is crumbling the kids are leaving school badly educated - we have a low level of high end skill workers and lots of low skilled workers fighting over minimum wage jobs.

But hey this is how they like it - keep us all in check - keeping us worried about our next meal on the table rather than what on earth they are doing to destroy the country.

I think it would have been better focused on the uk timebomb - google it - if you have no idea about the 1.4 trillion debt we owe and exactly to whom and for what reason ? Is it the chinese and most of it related to illegal wars over the last decade and the cost of security surrounding this.

No go pat yourselves on the back done a great job in deceiving the nation yet again

ASSTR

I guess it's a good job that alt.sex.stories text repository is not hosted in the UK then?

Amend the Fraud & Abuse Act: Excellent then does one also intend to include "Fraudulent Service Providers" spying on the common folk whilst they siphon off Billions of Tax payers revenue into one's personal off-shore tax haven?!?

Perhaps the genuine Fraud is the fact that most software in release to the Public is distributed with no warranty and this is done because of course these service providers actually place the malicious code in there own software and then to add insult to injury sell the vulnerabilities later on.

CIA Sub-Project 11/9 (9-11) MKUltra and population mind control via the Telephone system they would have us all believe is a personal computer system. MJ12 - Magic or Majestic - Wording you'd be hard pressed to miss when examining your Microchips! UFO - Oh they're refering to Plan B & Plan 9 from Outer Space which has no Bugs and is in use by all 9 Major providers otherwise known as MAINWAY to the NSA who seem to operate under the assumption that the Bell-Southern Database is there's to use and abuse but saddly it is in point of fact open source and that means it belongs to the people too.

There was a case, a few years ago, being brought by Kent Police as I recall, where a prosecution was being attempted under the Obscene Publications Act, for the content of an entirely private online chat: the thinking being, presumably, that the scope of the OPA could be extended to virtually anything IF the participants in the conversation could be construed as 'publishing' to each other (for sufficiently warped and twisted definitions of 'publishing'). I believe El Reg reported on it at the time.

I'd very much like to know what the final score was in that case; that hasn't been reported to my knowledge.

(It may be relevant to the attempt to criminalize 'paedophilic manuals', whatever the hell they turn out to be. Probably virtually anything, IF in the possession of someone the police decide they want to charge with something...)

RE. Re. ASSTR

What about all the Trek fanfic then?

Pretty sure that all the stories featuring Kes on ST:Voy are illegal, after all "they only live ten years" is not a defence under the proposed amended Act.

Insert other fanfic here, its pretty much guaranteed that it will be covered under "extreme pr0n", "terror manuals" or other fashionable buzzwords.

A good example is the infamous ST:TOS episode featuring the homemade explosives, which showed the amounts AND how to identify the chemicals by taste.

Yeah, lets start by regulating the sate use of computers to spy on us, bitch.

What's good for the goose . .

So then it appears that computer crime is nearly on par with the destructiveness of modern government. If then penalties are being buttressed in the one area, . .