UK hacker headed back to court after CMA found wanting
Posted on 12 May 2006 at 17:41
A teenager freed under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act (CMA) after being accused of bombarding a former employer with millions of emails is facing a retrial after an appeal decision ruled that the judge had been wrong to clear him.
David Lennon, now 18, was cleared last November by District Judge Kenneth Grant at Wimbledon Magistrates Court when he ruled that the sending of some five million emails in order to take down an email server did not constitute unauthorised access or modification of computer systems, with which he was charged.
However, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) appealed the decision and the Royal Courts of Justice decided yesterday that Judge Grant was wrong to conclude there was no case to answer.
Instead the case will be sent back to the Magistrates Courts for a retrial.
The case highlights the shortcomings of the CMA and its inability to deal with the modern electronic crimes made possible with the advent of the Internet.
There are ongoing attempts to update the Act; the most recent being the publication in January 2006 of the Police and Justice Bill, which amends various acts of Parliament and includes provisions for Denial of Service attacks by creating a new offence of preventing or hindering 'access to any program or data held in any computer'. Anyone convicted of this offence faces a jail term of up to ten years.
Author: Matt Whipp
advertisement
- Need a bit of extra Christmas cash? Grass up your boss, says BSA
- Photoshop Mobile on Android review: first look
- ATI Radeon HD 5970: 42% more expensive in the UK
- Office 2010 Beta – 32-bit or 64-bit – The Choice is Clear
- Why Britain's watchdogs have fewer teeth than goldfish
- Tabbed documents: how to make Office 2010 great
- Outlook 2010 People Pane – does it spell death to Xobni
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots
- Co-Authoring in Word 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010
- Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots: Backstage view
- Getting to grips with Microsoft's IT Health Environment Scanner
- Virtualise your servers
- The changing face of travel gadgets
- Build your own distributed file system
- The bulletproof Dell that costs an arm and a leg
- Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview: Q&A
- Lawnmowers, the TyTN II and one odd insurance request
- There'll never be a bulletproof OS
- How far can we trust apps?
- Five nice touches in Outlook 2010
advertisement
Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk

