Law Commission (UK) Report No. 186

 Law Commission (UK) Report No. 186 
 Computer Misuse                    
 Recommendations 1989 (Extracts)    


[ This report was published in October 1989. See also
  the Working Paper on Computer Misuse No. 110 of 1988 ]

3.14  A person is guilty of an offence if, knowing that his access was
unauthorised, he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to
secure access to or obtain information about a program or data held in a
secure access to or obtain information about a program or data held in a
computer. [Triable summarily. Penalty 3 months / fine to level 4]

  ...

3.49  A person is guilty of an offence if, knowing his access was
unathorised, he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to
secure access or to obtain information about a program or data held in a
computer with intent to facilitate the commission by the accused or by any
other person of an offence for which the maximum penalty is five years'
imprisonment or more, whether or not that further offence would involve the
use of a computer. [Penalty 5 years]

  ...

3.64  A person is guilty of an offence if he does an act which causes an
unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer's memory or the
contents of any computer storage medium, with intent thereby to impair the
operations of any computer or computer program, or to destroy, or to
impair the reliability or accessibility of, any data stored or
otherwise held in any computer. [Penalty 5 years]

  ...

5.3  We recommend, in relation to three new offences, that there should be wide
provisions conferring jurisdiction on the courts of England and Wales,
similar to those recommended in the case of fraud in our recent report.
[Law Commission report No. 180, Jurisdiction Over Offences of Fraud and
Dishonesty With a Foreign Element, London: HSMO, 1989]

5.4  We do not, in this report, make any recommendation as to the reform of the
law of deception, reserving that matter for further report.

5.5  We recommend that use by an authorised user of a computer for an
unauthorised purpose should not, in itself, be a criminal offence.

5.6  We make no recommendations as to alterations of the law of evidence or
procedure in relation to crimes of computer misuse.

  ...
Interim Report on Computer Crime (Gibbs Report) Chapter 1