Tech law update 9 August 2010
Law Society’s s92A Copyright Act submission
Computerworld covers the controversy of the New Zealand Law Society’s submission on the s92A Copyright Act review, which included a recommendation to tighten the disconnection penalty. The submission, and comments from one of the authors, barrister Clive Elliot, are here.
IT admin jailed for holding system “hostage”
A San Francisco network administrator has been sentenced to four years jail for refusing to hand over passwords to the City’s computer systems he was maintaining. The charge was “denying or disrupting computer services to an authorized user”. The computer network continued to operate during the 12 day “lock-out”.
In New Zealand, section 250 of the Crimes Act makes it an offence to:
“”intentionally or recklessly, and without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised … causes any computer system to … deny service to any authorised users”
This would cover a situation where a network administrator deliberately changed passwords to lock out rightful users, but it would be less clear in a situation where an administrator withheld a password (that had been innocently changed / set at an earlier time) and then withheld it after (say) becoming disgruntled.
NZ Police turn to Google for help
While the Police are apparently still considering (at the request of the Privacy Commissioner) whether Google committed criminal acts by capturing public WiFi data (my verdict: not guilty), they are cleverly using Google’s data as a crime fighting tool to establish the location of suspects.
No Aussie net filter
More death-knells are sounding for the Australian government’s unloved internet filter plans. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he will push on with it, but unless a new Gillard government is returned with a larger majority than present (which seems unlikely), the plan will not survive the Senate.
