What we’re lacking here is a clear differentiation between types of “hacktivist” or, indeed, “activist”: much of the commentary that’s around at the moment seems to assume that all hacktivists are the same.

The BBC program Panorama last night investigated claims that the News of the World hired a hacker to break into a subject's PC to steal emails. In fact, it appears that the unnamed hacker installed a Trojan on the victim's PC. Which sounds like a fairly unequivocal breach of the Computer Misuse Act, which outlaws