[LINK] ID theft brings tech to law

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 10:00 +1000, Roger Clarke wrote:
> I've been a critic of the UNCITRAL mania for technology neutrality 
> for a long time, because I see it as a cop-out by lawyers who don't 
> understand technology and who don't want to get their hands dirty.

Call me naive then, but I think technology neutral is an absolute must.
The canonical example - we have no laws for "murder by gun", we just
have laws about murder.

Yes, I know we also have laws about guns :-) The technology-specific
laws relating to guns are in essence preventative and in essence about
safety. The offences they define are essentially about endangering
people. Should the endangerment become sad reality, then the offender
has two charges to worry about - the technology specific offence
(endangerment) and the technology neutral offence (murder, whatever). 

> A working rule that says 'mainly focus on the generic'? - yep, I 
> fully support that.  Unpreparedness to look deeper, and regulate at a 
> deeper level if the situation warrants it? - nope, not good enough.

If the situation warrants it - yes. I still want someone to describe to
me a situation that warrants it.

Misuse of information is misuse of information; whatever the form the
information is in, however it might be stored or transmitted. Laws, to
be effective, need to catch that misuse by defining the misuse, not by
defining the technology that allowed or facilitated the misuse.

Regards, K.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)