The Police and Justice Bill 2006 contains amendments to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in Miscellaneous Part 5 Computer Misuse amendments.

The Open rights Group asked me if I could look over the amendments and I have written up my notes here.

I must first say that after looking at some of the jibberish written in European Bills its nice to see this was written in plain English.

Unfortunately clause 38 of the bill is problematic. This clause intends to ban the development, ownership and distribution of so-called "hacker tools", which is troubling as it does not make allowances for security personnel who must have ways of testing the security of systems. The clause does not handle "dual use" software that could be used for legal things but could also be used to do things that are harmful.

As an analogy, consider that while a knife or a hammer may be used as an offensive weapon, and as such may well be prohibited from being carried in public, they are generally legal in a chef's kitchen or a carpenter's workshop. It is also perfectly legal to make or adapt such physical tools in a factory or workshop.

This clause would prohibit the manufacture, copying or sale of dual-use software tools and utilities, even in a legitimate software company such as Microsoft.