Europe Hacker Laws Could Make Protest a Crime
The reality of the net as a powerful tool of organisation and co-ordination has been brought home not only by the anti-war protests of the last month, but actions such as the Virtual march on Washington which have been entirely online events. Problem is that under proposed legislation, they could be classed as terrorism.

The justice ministers of the European Union have agreed on laws intended to deter computer hacking and the spreading of computer viruses. But legal experts say the new measures could pose problems because the language could also outlaw people who organize protests online, as happened recently, en masse, with protests against a war in Iraq.

The agreement, reached last week, obliges all 15 member states to adopt a new criminal offense: illegal access to, and illegal interference with an information system. It calls on national courts to impose jail terms of at least two years in serious cases.

Critics from the legal profession say the agreement makes no legal distinction between an online protester and terrorists, hackers and spreaders of computer viruses that the new laws are intended to trap.

I tell my eCommerce classes in Sydney that the Internet has one very important function, it shifts power; this would seem to vindicate that in spades.