Security News > 2021 > May > UK Computer Misuse Act convictions declined last year despite pandemic explosion in online criminal activity
Prosecutions under the UK's Computer Misuse Act dropped by a fifth in 2020 even as conviction rates soared to 95 per cent during the year of the pandemic, new statistics have revealed.
This week's conviction statistics also showed that the most common CMA crime taken to court was the offence of "Unauthorised access to computer material", accounting for 33 of the year's total of 45 prosecutions under the Act.
"A spokesperson for the CyberUp campaign to reform the CMA told The Register:"How can it possibly be that Computer Misuse Act prosecutions have gone down during the last year?
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In the last decade, only one person, a woman aged 40-49 during 2017, has been given an absolute discharge after a CMA conviction.
CyberUp's spokesman concluded: "This data shows the increase in crime over the last year clearly isn't leading to more prosecutions, and speaks to the fact there is something very wrong with the Computer Misuse Act. We would urge anyone who cares about the UK's cyber crime laws to respond to the government's review into this outdated Act, which closes on the 8th June.".