The Labour MP for Glasgow South called for amendments to the
Computer Misuse Act of 1990 in his Ten Minute Rule Bill – a type of
Private Member's Bill that rarely becomes law, but serves to raise
Parliamentary awareness of a need for legal reform.
Tom Harris’s Computer Misuse Act 1990 (Amendment) Bill picks up
on the key recommendations of an inquiry into the original Act by
the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group, known as APIG,
published in June 2004. The Group exists to provide a discussion
forum between new media industries and parliamentarians.
The report led to APIG Chairman Derek Wyatt MP’s own Ten Minute
Rule Bill of April 2005, although this was not the first attempt to
change the Act: in 2002, the Earl of Northesk introduced his own
Ten Minute Rule Bill – but like most such bills, it died.
Like Mr Wyatt's recent proposal, Mr Harris's Bill amends section
three of the Computer Misuse Act in order to explicitly criminalise
all means of interference with a computer system, in particular
creating a specific offence for denial of service (DoS) attacks.
The Bill also increases the tariff for hacking offences (dealt with
in section one of the Act) from six months to two years, and from
five to ten years for further related offences.
Mr Wyatt said:
“We welcome this Bill particularly as it
reflects the work of the All Party Group over the last two years
and especially my own Ten Minute Rule Bill from earlier this year.
We hope that the Government adopts the measures proposed in the
Bill as a matter of urgency, reflecting the significant threat that
cybercrime poses to the UK.”
In his speech to the House of Commons, Mr Harris highlighted the
inconsistency between the severe financial consequences of hacking
attacks that can cause losses of millions of pounds and the
sentences currently possible to punish such attacks.
He gave some examples of DoS attacks, including one that had
been launched by one of his own constituents, a gun enthusiast, who
bombarded a gun control website with so many emails that its server
crashed. The website contacted Mr Harris to complain.
Mr Harris said:
"This is an issue that up until now hasn't
been taken seriously enough. So much of the UK economy depends on
the internet, and so many services are vulnerable if we allow these
attackers to go unpunished. It's time we faced up to this new
threat."
Mr Wyatt's bill ran out of Parliamentary time. It would
otherwise have been read a second time. Nobody opposed Mr Harris's
bill and it is scheduled for a second reading on 2nd December
2005.
