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Comment by madaxe_again | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, this advice is illegal in the U.K. under the computer misuse act - circumventing measures intended to restrict access to information is a criminal offence, as is providing information on how do do so.

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My sense is that this is incorrect.

I think the law would prohibit breaking into people's computers, not circumventing internet censorship.

By circumventing internet censorship you're accessing information that its owner wants you to be able to access. You're not breaking into their computer.

Unfortunately, no. Consider prosecutions of users in the U.K. for accessing TPB via a VPN - TPB didn’t prohibit access, the govt did - but using any computer to access any information on any other computer which you are not authorised to access for any reason is an offence.

Link? Can't find any evidence that people have been prosecuted in UK for using VPN for TPB.

Now your are mixing copyright problems with accessing public-data...not really honest of you.

And it was not the Goverment who went against the users but Atari, Codemasters, TopWare Interactive, Reality Pump, Techland and the "Ministy of Sound"...for COPYRIGHT violations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_in_the_United_Kin...

Can you please show me the law? Because that would mean that the U.K needs to close GCHQ and any other secret-service maybe even some police-work.

Many things the agencies do is either illegal or would be illegal for ordinary citizens.

Believe it or not, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are permitted to do things ordinary citizens aren’t, in the course of their work.

As to the relevant bit - section one, paragraph one, subsection a:

>> 1)A person is guilty of an offence if— >> (a)he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer [or to enable any such access to be secured] ;

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/1

I knew you meant that law, and the whole law is about "hacking" INTO computer systems/networks to access private/not-authorized data, not circumvent blocking measurements for accessing public/authorized-by-the-owner-of-the-system data.

>Believe it or not, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are permitted to do things ordinary citizens aren’t

Believe it or not, that's just partially true.

That's not the whole thing. See also subsection b:

> (b)the access he intends to secure [F2, or to enable to be secured,] is unauthorised

If you're trying to access a news website it's pretty likely that your access is authorised.

Without subsection b, literally every use of a computer is computer misuse.

"restrict access to information" means passwords, etc

True, but I'd say blocking network access os also a valid restriction by the owner.

And that's the key difference here - restricted by owner.

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