Govt. Joins Net Treaty That May Limit Rights in U.S., Overseas (August 11, 2006)
"The US Senate last week ratified a treaty requiring participating countries to share citizens' personal digital data and aid each others' criminal investigations, an arrangement privacy advocates say will amount to increasing surveillance of Internet users and the enforcement of foreign laws in the United States."
Senate Ratifies Controversial Cybercrime Treaty (August 7, 2006)
"But one portion, which provoked the most controversy, deals with international cooperation. It says Internet providers must cooperate with electronic searches and seizures without reimbursement; the FBI must conduct electronic surveillance "in real time" on behalf of another government; that U.S. businesses can be slapped with "expedited preservation" orders preventing them from routinely deleting logs or other data.
What's controversial about those requirements is that they don't require "dual criminality"--in other words, Russian security services investigating democracy activists could ask for the FBI's help in uncovering the contents of their Yahoo Mail or Hotmail accounts, or even conducting live wiretaps."
Convention on Cybercrime. See also Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest, 23.XI.2001)
Cybercrime Treaty Bibliography — By Date (last updated 4/30/04)
The Council of Europe Cybercrime Treaty
“The Cybercrime Treaty is an international agreement created for the ostensible purpose of helping police cooperate on crimes that take place on the Internet. Unfortunately, the treaty, which was drafted with very little public input, requires signatory nations to cooperate with foreign dictatorships and give invasive new surveillance powers to law enforcement. It also lacks protections for privacy or other civil liberties, and applies far more broadly than to just the Internet.”
Global Internet Liberty Campaign Member Letter
“We write to you on behalf of a wide range of civil society organizations from around the world to object to the proposed Convention on Cyber-Crime. We believe that the draft treaty is contrary to well established norms for the protection of the individual, that it improperly extends the police authority of national governments, that it will undermine the development of network security techniques, and that it will reduce government accountability in future law enforcement conduct. . . .”
Eight Reasons the International Cybercrime Treaty Should be Rejected
“The Cybercrime Convention does three major things:
Cybercrime
“Several international initiatives on cyber-crime raise concerns for Internet freedom and threaten to result in government mandates on industry. One effort is being undertaken by the Council of Europe (COE), which is drafting a treaty on computer crime. The Group of Eight (G-8 - the seven major industrial nations plus Russia) have been discussing cyber-crime at the ministerial level. CDT here collects various materials on these initiatives, focusing on the COE proposal.”
www.cybercrime.gov
“The Criminal Division, Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section, U.S. Department of Justice. This Section is responsible for implementing the Justice Department's Computer Crime Initiative, a comprehensive program designed to address the growing global computer crime problem. The Section is also responsible for coordinating the enforcement of criminal laws protecting intellectual property: copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.”
Fuzzy logic behind Bush's cybercrime treaty (November 28, 2005)
"Bush claims the treaty, formally approved by a Senate committee this month, will 'deny safe havens to criminals, including terrorists, who can cause damage to U.S. interests from abroad, using computer systems.'
But in reality, the Convention on Cybercrime will endanger Americans' privacy and civil liberties—and place the FBI's massive surveillance apparatus at the disposal of nations with much less respect for individual liberties."
CBI calls for cybercrime laws to be updated (November 22, 2005)
“The Computer Misuse Act was passed in 1990 — years before hacking became the widespread threat it is today, and before Tim Berners-Lee created the Web. In recent years, many experts have warned that the CMA is inadequate, because it does not cover modern threats such as denial-of-service attacks. Also, its penalties are too lenient to allow UK citizens to be extradited abroad in line with the UK's obligations under the Cybercrime Convention, or for foreign suspects to be brought here for trial.”
U.S. defends cybercrime treaty (April 23, 2004)
“The U.S. is one of 38 nations that have signed onto the Council of Europe's "Convention on Cybercrime," but the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified the measure. In a letter to the Senate last November, President Bush called the pact "the only multilateral treaty to address the problems of computer-related crime and electronic evidence gathering." The treaty, "would remove or minimize legal obstacles to international cooperation that delay or endanger U.S. investigations and prosecutions of computer-related crime," said Bush.”
Bush pushes for cybercrime treaty (November 18, 2003)
“In a letter to the Senate on Monday, Bush called the Council of Europe's controversial treaty "an effective tool in the global effort to combat computer-related crime" and "the only multilateral treaty to address the problems of computer-related crime and electronic evidence gathering.”
Protocol on Hate-Crimes and Xenophobia
“After months of working in secret, the Council on Europe February 7 finally released documents on its controversial Protocol on Hate-Crimes and Xenophobia.”
Cybercrime treaty's a secret policemen's ball
“This is where the dark side of the net comes in handy. If you are (say) a Home Secretary who seeks draconian powers to control the net, your best strategy is to scare the citizenry by exaggerating the risks from criminals and paedophiles to justify those powers. Since nobody knows the extent of criminal use of the network, you are unlikely to be challenged on empirical grounds. Blunt assertions from policemen and spooks are all you need. This was how the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was pushed through - giving MI5 access to every digital packet flowing through a British ISP's servers.”
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