Hi, the following is the situation as it stands with the development of internet in south africa, and how things are being monopolised by 2 groups, fighting for power, at the cost of the average internet user. The 2 current groups fighting at the moment for power are the ISPA (the internet service providers association) and the telecomms company, guaranteed a monopoly on all telecomms in this country until 2003. The fight to date has gone as far as telkom trying to claim that the internet falls under their telecomms monopoly law and therefore they get a monopoly on it in this country. This was rejected by SATRA (South African Telecomms Regulations Authority) but the internet was still placed as a telecomms service, subject to the telecomms acts. Up until this time, the fights between the ISPA and Telkom have not as yet had much bearing on the average internet user in this country, however suddenly the hacking scene in south africa emerged, and 3 months ago some kiddie hackers decided to fdisk a bunch of servers. Under our laws nothing could be done to them, but 3 months later they break into Telkom, they do no damage, just browse around the system, telkom has them arrested etc. Under our legal system however, their computers were seized, but no one was actually allowed to view the contents of the harddrives etc on the machines. Including the fact that even if they were allowed to look on those harddrives, the data on those harddrives was encrypted according to the 2 hackers. So to sum up the situation in this country: Our backbone infrastructure of our internet (the telephone lines and digital lines etc) are being monopolised by one company that is state controlled (Telkom) The hacking scene is rising into the picture fast, and no one is ready to deal with it yet in the industry The laws of this country protect no one from anything on the internet Suddenly though there is a fight to create new laws in this country. The law currently says the following A.) You cannot be prosecuted for damaging or erasing data on a machine that is not yours, due to the fact that all property that falls under the laws which refer to damaged property, has to be corporeal, computer data is not considered as such. B.) You cannot be prosecuted for breaking and entering if you penetrate a computer as breaking and entering under the current law has to refer to a physical structure that you break into. C.) You cannot be prosecuted for violations of copyright if you pirate international software, and 99% of software in south africa is imported from outside, this is due to the copyright act of 1978 stating the following: A Computer program is defined as "a set of instructions fixed or stored in any manner and which, when used directly or indirectly in a computer, directs its operation to bring about a result" A computer program will be subject to copyright if it is original and if the author is a South African citizen or domiciled or resident in the Republic, or if it is first published or mad in the Republic. Copyright initially vests in the author of a work but it may be transferred to third parties. With the above as our current law, there is a move to change various parts of what is currently law. Everything they are changing it to seems to be based on the computer laws in the UK, and certain things from singapore. They are also looking to form legislation that may or may not allow for attempted decryption of logs on a harddrive, and the entry of decrypted logs into evidence, the restriction of encryption in this country, the allowance for semi-tangible evidence etc etc etc. My question is, does anyone know where I can find information regarding the UK laws as regards cyber crime, how the courts handle electronic logs, how the courts handle encryption in the UK, and if anyone has any comments on the above I would love to hear them. Cheers Andrew Alston (System Administrator)