Hacker trial raises issues over evidence gathering

The acquittal of a teenager accused of hacking into a US-based computer shows the need for better evidence gathering in prosecuting IT crime, say experts.

Aaron Caffrey was last week found not guilty of a denial of service attack against systems at the Port of Houston in Texas.

Caffrey's PC was used to launch the attack, but his defence successfully claimed that a 'trojan horse' program had been copied onto the computer without his knowledge.

The case shows the difficulty of prosecutions under the Computer Misuse Act, but does not mean there is anything wrong with the law, says Peter Wilson, a partner in dispute resolution at technology law specialist Tarlo Lyons.

'It is not a question of more law, but of better preparation of cases and more sophisticated evidence gathering techniques,' he said.

'Evidential issues have always been a problem with computer cases because of the lack of human involvement. This case suggests that far from solving those problems, the evidential trail is still not proven. I don't see how you can change the law to overcome that.'