The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was cleared earlier this month after District Judge Kenneth Grant agreed with defence lawyers that even if the teenager had sent an alleged five million emails to his former boss – something that was not confirmed in court – no offence had been committed.
This was because the Act, which was drafted in 1990, before the World Wide Web existed, does not contain a specific offence dealing with denial of service (DoS) attacks.
“It is time to take cyber-crime seriously,” said Tom Harris. “Hi-tech crime is costing this country billions of pounds a year, but the laws in place to combat it are outdated.”
The Labour MP for Glasgow South called on MPs to approve his Private Members Bill amending the Act, when it comes up for its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 17th March.
The 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.
Specifically, the Bill seeks to criminalize all means of interference with a computer system, in particular creating an offence of denial-of-service 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 10 years for further related offences.
“Although this recent case seems to confirm the perception that hacking, virus-proliferation and denial-of-service attacks are the product of bright but lonely socially challenged teenagers it is important to note that this perception is outdated, inaccurate and dangerous,” warned Mr Harris. “Those who regularly and increasingly hold website operators to ransom are more likely to be members of an organised crime syndicate than the school computer club.”
