What legislation? There already is adequate legislation, the problem is with enforcing it.
I couldn't agree more. In my country we are losing our civil liberties, at a similar rate to the US and UK. One example of this was a bill brought in dealing with tracking stolen cell phones via their IMEI, and it was mentioned in the parliament, that "Hackers" could change the IMEI using some software, so they decided to make changing the IMEI illegal. They seemed to have forgotten that cell phone theft is illegal already. If people were still doing it, making something else illegal was not going to do anything other than perhaps, make them look good for their constituents. Luckily changing the IMEI is not currently illegal, but may become so in the future.

It all boils down to one thing. Make your citizens afraid, and they will agree to anything. Its like global warming. The average joe is now terrified of what will happen to the earth, and everyone is talking about carbon emissions ad infinum and ad-nauseum. They only things the government has done in this country, is increase the price of plastic bags, increase the tax on large engines, and er, thats it.

That article is like pretty much any other modern article with the phrase "hacker" in it. It has confused the true meaning of hacker with that of at best anarchist psychopathic teenagers, at worst petty fraudsters.

If the government, and society in general wanted to improve things, whether they be global warming, computer security, crime in general, there are some very simple steps to do so. And one of the first is enforce what laws are there already.