[Quote:]

Both the Tories and Lib Dems have backed government measures to increase penalties for UK computer hackers.

Anyone hacking a computer could be punished with 10 years’ imprisonment under new laws.

The move follows campaigning from Labour MP Tom Harris, whose ideas are now being adopted in the Police and Justice Bill.

There will be a clearer outlawing of offences like denial-of-service attacks in which systems are debilitated.

This is one of those laws written by people with no clue about technology, and therefore hopelessly and dangerously broad. In this case, the text reads:

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he makes, adapts, supplies or offers to supply any article-

(a) knowing that it is designed or adapted for use in the course of or in connection with an offence under section 1 or 3; or

(b) intending it to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3.

A loose but credible reading of the above seems to cover every mainstream operating system, every compiler or interpreter, every text editor, every communications tool, and more.

Here is a tool I use regularly when working, but by giving you that link I am now a criminal under this new law. Absurd.