Schedule 13 - Minor and consequential amendments
Police and Justice Bill
5:30 pm
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 149, in schedule 13, page 127, line 34, at end insert—
‘In this subsection “act” includes a series of acts.’”.
The amendment takes us back to the computer misuse provisions. It makes it clear that acts of attack on computers will include a series of acts. There has been some legal difficulty about the interpretation. For example, if somebody consents to receive one e-mail, that is one matter, but to be bombarded by a series of hundreds of thousands of similar e-mails can dramatically disrupt the operation of a computer. There was a recent case known as the Wimbledon youth case in which an abuser repeatedly sent an e-mail message to a particular address at a specific site— it has been called a case of mail bombing. People were inundated with the e-mails. The amendment makes it clear that a series of acts as well as a single act can be included in the offence. That is a helpful clarification of the legal position.