A U.K. Member of Parliament (MP) Thurs. proposed legislation aime...
A U.K. Member of Parliament (MP) Thurs. proposed legislation aimed at strengthening that country’s antihacking law. The proposal by Derek Wyatt, a Labor MP who chairs the All Party Internet Group (APIG), would amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
(CMA) by defining denial-of-service attacks as offenses and by raising jail time for hacking convictions from 6 months to 2 years, making them extraditable crimes. The bill incorporates recommendations from an APIG inquiry into CMA revisions. APIG said that although the CMA does outlaw many denial- of-service attacks, the more specific definition would encourage police, prosecutors and courts to take such attacks seriously, and might deter some hackers. With the Home Office agreeing in principle, APIG had hoped its cause would be the Queen’s speech last Nov., an APIG spokesman said. When that didn’t happen, APIG sought a Private Members’ Bill, using a mechanism that lets backbenchers file bills of their own with govt. support. However, eligibility to do so is by ballot, and only 20 MPs can qualify. Wyatt failed to get a winning MP to sponsor his legislation, so he applied for a 10-min. rule motion giving him that long on April 5 to argue for the CMA amendments. If there’s no opposition, the bill will move to a 2nd reading, the spokesman said. For the moment, the bill isn’t likely to go anywhere, but Wyatt said he wanted to place on record “what we think the Bill should look like in the hope that the Government will come back to it after the General Election.”