Our Man in Botswana

Our Man in Botswana — Phil Hudson <[email protected]> writes from Gaborone, Botswana, with thoughts on who legislation on computer crime really affects:

The increasingly important issue of computer crime needs to be debated with a better, clearer understanding of the main perpetrators, and that includes, unfortunately, nation-states, their governments, administrations, law enforcement agencies, and spies. The state may be part of the solution, with legislation (let’s hope so) but it is already part of the problem – slightly less so in America, with its freedom of information legislation, but definitely in Europe and Asia. Would you trust the UK never to infringe your rights? You’d better – you have no way of checking on them and no comeback if they do abuse you. This is not a new idea for Americans – the Constitution is designed to provide the citizen with redress for all sorts of administrative wrongdoings – but a lot of people elsewhere in the world have never thought in those terms (or never have been allowed to).