"In 1990, after a few false starts, something was done. The Computer Misuse Act was passed, and not a moment too soon. Computers now had processors that could warm a cup of tea, modems could skip along at 9,600 bps, and Tim Berners-Lee had just invented the World Wide Web to give tea drinkers something to do online. The CMA made it a crime to access or alter data on computers without permission."
"Moore's Law does not apply to actual laws, alas. It's taken the UK government until now to get around to kicking off the requisite changes. It has finally noticed that in the past 25 years, cybercrime has become a multibillion-dollar global industry, ill-intentioned foreign powers are riddling industry and the state with binary bullet holes, and letting the good guys do what the bad guys have been doing all this time isn't the dumbest of ideas. God bless the United Kingdom's lawmaker"
In the early 1980s four young British hackers used home computers and 75 bps modems to attack British Telecom's Prestel service, exposing the absence of computer-crime laws. The Computer Misuse Act of 1990 criminalized unauthorized access and alteration of computer data, without exemptions for legitimate cybersecurity researchers. Universities began offering computer security degrees, producing researchers whose work later required legal protection. Over the past 25 years cybercrime has grown into a multibillion-dollar global industry and state actors have increasingly targeted industry and government. The UK government has started updating the law to enable lawful cybersecurity research and better counter modern digital threats.
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