Labour reminds UK.gov that it's supposed to be reforming the Computer Misuse Act The shadow foreign secretary for UK's opposition Labour party, David Lammy MP, has asked why the reform of the Computer Misuse Act appears to have stalled in an open letter to government. The letter, published on the Labour Party website, takes the ruling Conservative Party's ministers to task over a range of what Labour sees …
Quote: "...Currently the act bans any unauthorised access to data held on a computer..."
......with the exceptions not mentioned anywhere! ...since certain organisations have unlimited authorisation to slurp up anything that takes their fancy.... no judges... no warrants..... You know who you are!!
.....not forgetting the convenient TREATY ARRANGEMENTS which allow foreign snoops to spy on UK citizens....
It's a clown show.....and GDPR is (still) a joke!!
"Even though Labour raising CMA reform publicly is part of a political swipe at ministers rather than genuine agreement that change is long overdue"
Its good for Labour to occasionally remind the population that it still exists after taking a nosedive. This isnt a swipe at Labour, I honestly dont envy anyone having to do the job of weeding out the infection that took it over and restoring the party to a viable opposition. Unfortunately no party seems to be stepping up to take on the Tories, instead all just sitting around letting the Tories fall.
Indeed, far better to wait until all the fallout from the pandemic and the energy crisis starts to settle, then step in and take credit for everything getting better.
Starmer might figure that out, but I'm not sure his more rabid associates like Rayner, Long-Bailey & Abbott are capable of that sort of deep thinking.
"Starmer might figure that out, but I'm not sure his more rabid associates like Rayner, Long-Bailey & Abbott are capable of that sort of deep thinking."
I quite liked the look of Starmer when he first made leader. On the other hand, he was following Corbyn and pretty much anyone would have looked good after him! But Starmer has sorely disillusioned me that Labour have any hope of being a real party any again anytime soon. He seems to spend all his time using his lawerly wiles to snipe at details with no real broad policies.
@Yet Another Anonymous coward
"You would want to take over now?"
Why not? Now is a great time for a party with any direction to put itself forward. First we have an economy smashed by covid and the reaction to it so it will be a growing economy (makes any party look good) but also there is freedom to decide the direction of trade, laws, etc which could be taken from a pro-EU or pro-Global or even pro-Nationalist flavour. The existing gov has the scandals over covid (mostly a party) and taken the flack for brexit so any party (even tory) could easily look like a strong leader by actually having some policies.
Boris looked like a strong leader for a while before losing momentum, now its more of a void with speculation being more about his replacement in the party. Who outside the tories look viable for election? And I consider that a bad thing, we need a viable opposition.
The odds of being taken to court under the Computer Misuse Act have always been vanishingly low. Way back in 2004 I investigated how the Act was being applied, and found that police forces generally tried to avoid it wherever there was an alternative piece of legislation that would fit the bill (no pun intended) - often because it was difficult to prove that specific actions were in contravention of it.
One of the big problems has always been refusal on the part of the legislators to define their terms. As a result, the Act has been and remains difficult to apply with assurance. Unfortunately, the problem of generating specific enough definitions of offences that are nevertheless not technology-bound (and thus prone to obsolescence) seems so far to be insuperable.
>The odds of being taken to court under the Computer Misuse Act have always been vanishingly low.
Unless you upset the government.
There are lots of laws that were only going to be used against terrorists / organised crime / international drug dealers - that got conveniently dragged out when you needed to threaten a journalist
On a related note, it looks like they're going to push through the "prove you're 18 to enter a porn site" rules without bothering to specify any mechanism for doing so anonymously let alone (cyber) safely.
Net result: a slight reduction on porn related crime, a big new opportunity for blackmailers and scammers.
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