Advanced IntelAIgent Virtual Defence ........ AIdDutch Treat. ..B.I.G.C.H.E.E.S.E*

"Should a group of geeks ever declare intention to gain independence of Cyberworld from the physical world then I will support them."

Lee,

CyberSpace/Cyberworlds are independent. So any mickey mouse legislation is merely some lower level hicks trying to muscle in on unknown virgin territory...... It's a mutant clone of the old Wild West ploy of Cowboys and Cavalry stealing native lands and introducing alien practices and concentration camps/Indian reservations.

To hide/withold information is tantamount to blackmail for obviously some information is valuable and is witheld for monetary/political advantage. Such secrecy though, does encourage, for a socially responsible, larger shared monetary/political advantage, search for all such information rather than it remaining an exclusive property/item. Abuse of such Exclusive facilities for Collateral Enrichment is just too easy and prevalent.

It could then be argued that in the Virtual Environment of Computer Carried Codes , hacking and cracking codes Ethically, is Mandatory Control Practice, so that Back Door Trojans/ Covert Power Bases are Impossible.

The jokers are 'avin' a larf because they have lost the Plot and too late they realise that they have neither the brains nor the XXXXPertEase to handle CyberIntelAIgents ...... A NeuReal Breed of Binary Thinkers/Apache Scout/ESPecial Forces Questioning their Sanity and Right to Think to Impose Punitive Earthly Rules of Censure to Protect against Discovery of Systemic Abuses.

The idiots and fawning fools may strut their stuff down on the Ground but in the Communication Space of Future Thought Transfer they are as nobodies and dogsbodies/lackeys to an old Analogue System..... crumbling and riddled with windows and holes.

*Business Intelligence Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering .... Sergey and Brin getting more than an Adult Education.

I wonder if ITs Learning Seeds are cast upon Stoney Ground. Silence will tell its accurate tale.

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html .... Hiding in full sight and disguised behind preposterously outrageous ramblings ...... the Simple Truth being further XXXXPlored. 42 Be No 1 Source of Future Information for Simpler Programming of Assets.

Well, that what Analien HyperRadioProActivity for NIRobotIQs and NEURobotIQs is all about ........ Simply Complex Binary Code rotation so that Machine Readable Codes become More Human Readable and as they become more Simply Complex and Human Readable will Beta Programmed Network InterNetworking RobotIQs/NIRobotIQs and their Sister Mastering Units/NEURobotIQs take Lead Decisions. Or is that the same as brainwashing/spin ..... with new technology possibilities for a Global Hold rather than any just a slam dunk at home.

IT is definitely Holy Grail stuff.

.

@ Keith T

I am the IT department for a small City of London company, owned by an overseas bank. The whole office in the UK is less than 10 and 2/3 of my time is spent on non-IT stuff as the MD needs us all to work hard to keep things going. I would like to spend more time on IT but cannot. I certainly couldnt spend time or money on becoming a "registered" security professional, with all the attendant compulsory exams and form-filling that would follow (to pay for either the civil servants administerting this or the salaries of the self appointed quanqo) and so would lose use of these tools if I needed them. This means that more or all of the IT support would be done from overseas, where its cheaper.

Lots of small companies couldnt afford this, it simply counts as more red tape. That doesnt make the government/CPS guidance any less of a problems, but your solution just becomes "jobs for the boys (well, those in the clique)" and will drive some work offshore.

Hold up!

Anonymous Coward - "Perhaps instead they should make "losing data through stupidity" illegal"

Your wish shall be granted AC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7168588.stm

Another nail in the UK coffin

Soon they will role out the last straw that will break this camel's back. We will revolt, escape or be fully assimilated.

Remember, it is not too late, resistance is not futile. Vote for no one by spoiling your ballet paper.

Think it like this:

If a 'facist' government wants to control its people, it must control communications and it must be able to watch everything we do. Not dissent will be tolerated (witness the 'debate' on global warming).

Tools to help with this plan:

Security forces armed with laws that prevent us testing the security of our systems.

Microsoft Windows

Government partnerships with commercial software firms

It is important as someone above said, to implement their master plan, that hobbyists/ amateur/open source developers are not allowed to use these tools to test anything. These facilities must remain with the government's commercial software/backdoor/vulnerability developing partners.

Remember:

Orwell wrote a warning but the Labour Party have mistaken it for an instruction manual!

Thisi is plain insanity

I saw this happen in Germany - never thought it would happen here. Fascist indeed.

Thing is - how do we stop the insanity?

There's more than one of me?

Hmm, I appear to be here already.

I'd not posted anything to this thread.

Just who is this 'Spartacus' bloke anyway?

RE: I am Spartacus - we need a Guild

I'm in.

really... if the government are that bad

Then why not vote lib dem. I know I am.

Regardless of the mindset of the general public, your own votes do make a difference. I know I'm sick of the current lot of fascists, and the conservatives are no better. Whilst they have some policies I disagree with, I think I'm ready to put a group of people in power that haven't already proven themselves to be incompetent and sleazy, at least give them the chance. :-)

If you vote for labour, or don't vote at all, then you have no right to complain about our ever dwindling personal freedoms, infact you deserve to lose them.

@Spartacus

Yah. I'm in too.

Just think of how much power a national IT guild or union would have.

Our profession keeps the world spinning, and it's time people recognised this.

Shame something like this will never happen :o)

creativitiy, inteligence, freedom of thought and expression

creativitiy, inteligence, freedom of thought and expression

why doesnt the government just not have done with and ban the lot!

that way it could arresst any dissenter under thought crime laws and the arrest the rest for being persisitantly enthnic in a built up area!

i am sure this would make the governments life much easier!

especailly if we reset the clock back to year 1

hmm.. most people on the reg cannot read it seems... including the reg themselves

if one reads the 1990 act amendment, you'll notice that it states that the offence only applies IF the accused *knowingly* adapts or supplies the application for use in a criminal offence... i.e. it's not what the software can do for you, but what you are guilty of using it for, with intent...

so... carry on writing and distributing nmap and nessus peeps... just do it for good reasons m'kay...

nothing to see here other than a law which states "if you give a hammer to someone when they've said they're going to use it for a crime, then you are assisting them"

seems quite a sane law that...

RE: 1984 here we are

Nail on the head there. We're all criminals now, so if we step out of line any one of us can be arrested and charged at the drop of a hat. It's much easier to rule a country when you can remove any members of the population that speak out against you.

I would happily join a guild, but I'd need to find another place to work before I did, The Firm I work for would just move their IT to another country.

Dan B: While the idea of voting Lib Dem does have some appeal -- why the fuck should I vote for the lesser of three evils? I don't vote because I don't recognise the authority of the government -- the country has been stolen by advertisers using brainwashed hordes of zombie voters -- I follow their laws because I don't want to be married to the guy with the most cigarettes. The only way to deal with this is to refuse to vote, and start a revolution -- and that just will not happen in our lifetime.

Re: Another nail in the UK coffin

"Remember, it is not too late, resistance is not futile. Vote for no one by spoiling your ballet paper"

Bad, bad, BAD idea. Just forget about "sending messages", "none of the above", "not in my name" or any tripe like that. If you spoil your paper, or don't even bother to vote, you might as well just bend over, drop your daks and wait for the red hot spike again. "We didn't vote for Labour" is a common cry. No, most people didn't. But there they are, and there's nowt we can do about it until possibly even 2010.

Our first past the post system means that only valid votes are counted and spoiled papers are just ignored. When you get a result like this:

Cholmondelely Ffoulke-Witt (Conservative Party): 3,115

Wayne Swampy Bancars (Liberal Democrat Party): 1,142

Martin Bormann (Labour Partei): 3,116

Spoiled papers: 38,963

I hereby declare the aforesaid Martin Bormann elected as Member of Parliament for Henley-On-Thames. Unt Herr Bormann vill not give ein monkey's about ze spoiled papiers. He's in Parliament for a five year jolly now, so hard luck Joe Public.

So, no paper spoiling, boys and girls. What's needed is a big swing to tactical voting. Two simple rules:

1. Vote for an extremist, or a crank. A dozen BNP members facing off to the Alliance for Green Socialism or the Official Monster Raving Loony Party would make for thoroughly entertaining politics, absolutely no chance of consensual voting except in real emergencies and also (the real aim) would force the big three parties to either put forward strong leaders or die. Either would be acceptable.

2. Vote for the party that came third last time. The one to follow if there aren't any nutters standing. That would also see a lot of the big noises in Westminster unseated. Tory Blair, Gordy and Sick Boy ousted by the Liberal Democrats - what a lovely idea.

So there you go. Vote according to your beliefs if you can, or vote tactically if you can't. But don't stick your head in the sand because that's how we got here in the first place.

The blind leading the clueless......

Yet another pure example of the clueless making a wild stab at trying to lead the blind - or is that the blind leading the clueless.......

Oh – I know it’s a knee jerk reaction because of the inept skills the current government have in keeping information safe.

They should have banned shredders and electro magnetic disk wipers – it would have made more sense (if you know what I mean ;-) ).

I've worked in the InfoSec business for years – you need to fight fire with fire – especially where the threat comes from outside of the UK where the computer misuse act doesn’t comply, that was well thought of.......no doubt they get a heavy pay rise, job move and full pension....

It use to be "Blair blah blah"

It's now "We're in the Brown stuff - the Gordon Brown stuff"

@Spartacus

You're thinking too small.

Consider a EUROPEAN guild, not only a national one. Given how dependant the world is on OUR it-services, we would be able to ENFORCE some intelligence in the laws. Neighter EU or any national or corporate interest would be able to tackle a Europe-wide IT-strike.

Now, the question is: Where do we set up our systems to make sure we're not shut down before we even get started?

(Posted anonymously, because an idea like a European guild may prolly be illegal due to "National Security")

Does this mean....

that any hacker found using XP as their OS will lead to Microsoft and Dixons being dragged up in front of the judge ????

Sounds like a sensible law to me ;-)

And while we're at it, how about prosecuting Dell, Lenovo for supplying the PCs and the Electricity companies for supplying power, without which none of these so called crimes could have been committed.....

How about...

One of those e-petitions; because they're taken seriously!

...mine's got ticket number 7

RE: I am Spartacus - we need a Guild

AC wrote: "IT is the only profession in the UK without a proper hard nosed guild."

Don't know about the "hard-nosed" part but there's always the IAP, (http://www.iap.org.uk/), although - despite the URL - does have members throughout the globe. Maybe run for president next time the election comes around? :-D

Meanwhile - on the main topic - as others have said, this is yet another plain daft piece of useless soundbite material from this govt. I would have thought that we had enough usable statutes on the books already without confusing with more. For example, would it not be feasible to state that someone selling/promoting script-kiddie kits is inciting their customers to commit an offence under the Computer Misuse Act. Not being a lawyer I'm not 100% on this, but it's something to think about.

Meanwhile, this new act will do squat to stop the tide of external digital maliciousness, either individual or state-sponsored (China and Russia if the last newspaper article I read is to be believed). :'-(

here's the problem

This is what the article says "create or distribute so-called "hacking tools" also "ownership and distribution" It also mentions "available on a wide scale commercial basis and sold through legitimate channels".

I don't see any mention of intent, which seems wrong. This is the big thing.

Did the author need to do more research first? I don't know. As reported, that's dramatic and sweeping. If I write a script to load test my website, and give it to a friend to test his website, who gives it to a blackmailer. Which one broke the law? How about if the blackmailer's intent was unknown to the friend?

Most IT admins use [free] "hacking tools" to audit their networks at some point. I've used multiple windows of the built in ping.exe utility to 'DOS' other (my) boxes to test stability. So is M$ now guilty of creating hacking tools? Maybe they're ok but when I use BSD they're in trouble?

Tools are not crimes. Ever watch "It takes a thief"? They don't use lockpicks. They use hammers. Randomly carrying a set of lockpicks breaks laws, but criminals don't use lock picks. Criminals would carry a hammer and walk around behind the building and break a window. I would like to carry picks, it's fun opening locks, it's a puzzle. Writing a program to break Vista is not a crime, it's not even immoral. Distributing it isn't either. (w/o malicious intent) Using it to break a system w/o permission is. Posting a 0day virus with a malicious payload should be. They should make a law/guidance for intent. Posting partial details of 0day to a security list after lenghty contact with the vendor, and full details to select responsible experts should be ok. Shows honest intent, help the users.

Now, having said that, if I came across a system that had an elaborate virus on it designed to capsize an oil tanker, and display a ransom message to the oil comapny, wouldn't that violate existing laws already? Conspiracy to commit blackmail or something? Same should apply to the 0day thought experiment.

(p.s. knocking on a door is not a crime. Intnet. Unless you do it every day for hours on end.)

-Bounty

@Michael and the locksmith guy.

A registry for people that could use network security tools? That'd be great. Every application is a security tool provided you have tcpdump. If you don't have tcpdump, good luck troubleshooting that slow DB problem due to a poorly implemented Nagle algorithm.

Or what if the DHCP service on your home router stops? dhclient -d can tell you a lot about the network around you. Only someone completely ignorant in IT would propose such a preposterous solution... or someone bent on abusing the power such a ban would give, like mis-guided guild members.

For Micheal's part, the DMCA made it illegal to watch DVD's on my laptop. That's quite enough isn't it? Or perhaps you think it's ok that you should be required to buy software from a particular cartel because it should be illegal to use a toaster oven to make shrinky-dinks?

Although the law doesn't necessarily elevate tcpdump to De-CSS status, it does make one wonder... Where will they go next?

I wish...

... we could get rid of this completely incompetent government who's answer to everything is either "Tax" or "Legislation." The spinning bottle obviously landed on the latter in this case.

And furthermore...

... where are all the demonstrations about the implications of the government making laws such as these? Does nobody care about the immense loss of freedom associated with such badly written laws?

Is it now illegal to distribute nmap? Isn't it? You don't know, you don't decide... the government does when they need to get rid of you for a while.

In another piece of legislation... Own a mobile phone? Is it illegal to own an EEPROM programmer? Or sell one? You don't know, You don't decide, Mr Brown does.

And theres plenty of other vague and badly written legislation such as this that's come from the arse of this government designed grant the government power by stealth. 1984 my arse. Today it's 1985. It's time we got rid of them pronto.

Techies take things far too seriously sometimes....

Come on you guys, this stuff is written by llegal types, that computer security experts ( though helpfully they consulted some ). There has to be a law to enforce electronic security, as electronic fraud is a major problem and costs companies and individuals billions in money , wastes time resetting problems and makes some people stay off useful technology, like online payments, for fear of being defrauded somehow.

If any of you know-it-alls can come up with a better set of 5 or so laws, give it a go. I'm all eyes . Just don't criticise and step back, that sort of thing shuld only happen in hairdressing saloons.

Re: Techies take things far too seriously sometimes....

But joe, you're missing the point. I doubt this bill will do anything to prevent e-crime. Why? Because most of the people actually doing damage are a) Overseas and b) Not afraid to commit crime anyway.

All this will do is make our businesses softer targets as we are disadvantaged by cutting off our security resources.

Hmmm..

Hang on.....If this law comes in, I bet Sony won't be putting any more Rootkits on their CD's!

remote debuggers for UK

I'm predicting a new business model to market in the UK; remote apps with the remarkable ability to "debug" software in any DRM controlled environment, locked up behind strong firewalls for only legitimate use of course.

Competency...

Competency in this case is not pretending to know everything about everything but instead seeking opinion from those who do. This takes time and effort which is what we pay them to do. This government failed to do that, and the result before us is yet another badly made piece of legislation.

Under this government, the records of 25 million families simply been "lost" with little if any protection. Competency in this case is ensuring that their departments protect OUR data from this kind of misuse.

This same government hopes to run the most invasive Identity Card scheme in the world whilst at the same time telling us of their competence to do so?

The list could go on and on and on...

So It's not about getting rid of the government of the day to solve the occasional arbitrary problem. It's about getting rid of THIS government which has consistently shown that it is incompetent and is no longer fit for purpose.

To all those who say..

.."If you don't vote you can't complain." The problem with this thinking is that some people can not register to vote because doing so would open them to being located by debt collectors, people who threaten their lives, and the police. Not necessarily all three for any individual case. Remember that details on the Electoral Register are made available to credit rating agencies and anyone else whom wishes it.

.."For who else can we vote? They are all the same; politicians are regular people like everybody else." Firstly, politicians tend to be people who feel disaffected by society, seek power for themselves, are unscrupulous when they need to be, are two faced and are compelled to see others skeptically. Secondly, some people are different. They are called Libertarian. Have a look at http://www.individualist.org.uk/the-individual-2002-2007.htm

.."Spoiled ballet papers achieve nothing." I agree, so if you have a right to vote (as do everybody who is not restricted through mental health and some other causes) and if you are in a position to register your details on the Electoral Role (assuming you have proof of ID and a fixed abode), vote for an independent.

.."All laws that have been passed over the last few years have been decried by someone or other as being an infringement on civil liberty." Well, laws have to be kept in check, all facets and consequences have to reviewed and allowed for before placement into the legal system. Reservations have to be aired, heard and acted upon. At the moment, all the laws required to arrest anyone for any reason whatsoever are available for use by law enforcement agencies. Just because those laws are not being implemented, yet, does not mean they never will. I'm waiting for the U.K gov to announce to the U.N that the U.K is so rife with crime that safe areas have been set-up so that everywhere else can be locked-down by barriers and security personnel.

Personally, I don't like to be in the U.K so I tend to live outside of it. Every time I visit, people here always seem more timid, less healthy, less in control of their lives and more fearful of the outside world. Could just be me but a lot of other people who live outside of the U.K see the U.K the same way. Maybe, if a new government is put into public service, the ambiguous, unnecessary and ineffectual legislation and red-tape concocted by New Labour will be burned and the ticking of civil freedom and political democracy will be restarted. Remember that "Those who trade some of their freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."

@triky

I understand what you are saying, but as I see it, the Swiss have got the government that they want, up to a point, they seem to want Blocher, he led his party to a massive victory in their last general election. The thing is, if he tried to institute laws that the citizens did not support, they could knock them back.

Remember that the vast majority of Swiss people are of Germanic descent, so they have got a German government at confederate level. As for Blocher, he was removed by inter party warfare, so he may well be back sometime soon.

I don’t get what you are saying about being a foreigner, surely, if you are a foreigner or a guest, you just play the game, if you stay for fifteen years, you can apply for citizenship, and cease to be a foreigner?

Anyway, the main point about Swiss democracy, is that it works from the bottom up, unlike any other system in the world, and given that scenario, it is not long before stupid legislation gets repealed.

stupid nuLabour

What a bunch of morons. This will actually make people less secure.

I use nmap to make sure that only the ports I want are open on my PC's and use kismet and ethereal to moniter whats going on with my wireless and wired networks.

Start making this stuff illegal because Jackie Smith is scared that people might acually care about their own security and we'll all be part of botnets by the end of the year (at least my windows users anyways).

Great! another law...

...but what about enforcing the law? As the law rule book gets fatter and fatter how do the government propose to ensure that the country's population is abiding by the law. If logic prevails (as it always does) then the more rules per person we have the thinner the law-men are spread. The thinner the law-men are spread the fewer criminals they will catch. The fewer criminals they catch the more the law is broken. The more the law is broken......you know where I'm going! So, more rules mean more rule-breaking - simple! Except....if a bigger investment is made in policing the law....hmmm.....that aint gonna happen. And thats the problem with rules!

I chose alien coz my mind works differently!

How?

How are they actually going to find out that we are using these tools?

Also, any IT bod with half a brain will just use a VISA or Mastercard and pay for their hosting is the US, Sweden or anywhere that this law doesn't cover! :)