Germany's new antihacking law: Bad for security?

As of Saturday, it's a crime in Germany to build, sell, distribute or obtain so-called "hacking tools" designed to allow access to protected data or promote other illegal acts.

The intention of the lawmakers, who proposed the item last year and passed it in late May, was to crack down on attacks on government and private-sector computer systems. Penalties include prison sentences of up to 10 years and fines, IDG News Service reports.

"The serious criminal will just keep on going with their malicious activity, probably a little bit bolder--safe in the knowledge that the German government has just made it a little bit more difficult for them to be found."

The makers of a product called KisMAC, a wireless network discovery tool for Mac OS X, said in a note at their Web site that the law shows "complete incompetence" but vowed to resume their activities in the nearby Netherlands.

"Even worse politicians still believe in the successful ban of digital information, obviously not reckoning globalization," the KisMAC representative wrote. "We are heading straight to a country I do not want to be living in."