Slashdot Mirror

Basically, you are a fucktard making a fucktarded argument. You are not worth the effort of responding to, but I will solely for the benefit of anyone else reading this tread, so they see how fucking stupid and wrong you are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship#Types http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring http://gilc.org/speech/osistudy/censorship/ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/censor http://www.thefreedictionary.com/censorship http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Censorship

Now, please go eat the bag of dicks you came in on, asshole.

Privacy should be free, and anyone forcing customers to pay for sufficient privacy are running an illegal operation. As said at http://gilc.org/privacy/survey/intro.html, "Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and in many other international and regional treaties." I know that $0.65 sounds cheap, but I'd be willing to sue anyone who requires me to pay for (any of) my human rights.

"I'd like to note my complete support for the CBDTPA.

I understand that virtually nobody else has said anything positive about this Act. That's because virtually everybody who has contacted you to discuss the Act so far is American. I'm not American, and I'd like to congratulate you on this most excellent piece of legislation, which will do more for the European computer, software, and music industries than any amount of pork our own legislators could have given us.

This Act is wonderful. At a stroke, you're crippling your software industry, destroying your nascent open source infrastructure, putting all your unsigned bands and hopeful novelists back behind the counter at McDonald's, and giving your computer and electronics vendors a huge ball and chain to lug around.

You'll also have given a big hand to Hollywood and the music industry -- a $35Bn turnover sector -- and successfully trashed the electronics, software and hardware industries -- upstarts whose $600Bn turnover is of no account. In so doing, you will have helped advance the USA to the status Imperial Britain aspired to in 1902 -- that of has-been former superpower.

If you pass this act, I will be sure to express my gratitude for the resulting pay rises and improved employment opportunities -- in Scotland and the rest of the EU, and indeed the developed world -- in writing. Thank you, and good luck."

On the yes, donate side... The US government's policies on copyrights / DRM / protecting Hollywood do affect the rest of the world. Our congress is the elephant in the electronics shop. The EFF is trying to keep the elephant tranquilized-- i.e. minimize the damage it can cause. The EFF is often a first responder-- it tries to catch weird new tech policies before they grow out of control and become laws in the US (and then the rest of the world). So donate 97% of your 'Rights x Technologies' monies to your local groups. But then also donate 3% to the EFF to prevent the bad US policies from being yet another worry for your local group. Insurance.

I would recommend "IRIS" instead. There are many EFF`alikes world-wide, the european ones tend to be in contact with European digital rights

Personally I would guess (ianal) any decent laywer should get you out of trouble without turning the court into a full disclosure gosphel church and the judge into an eff cheerleader. These things can backfire you know, even in the pre-DMCA-US not everyone agreed on full disclosure beeing the best first step to handle finding holes. Personally I think you put yourself at greater risk if you do not at least discus holes with the manufacturer privately. What if systems get cracked by a hole you knew about but claim never to have discussed with anyone ....surely script kiddies didn`t find it on there own, what is the chance of that?

Unless there is evidence of code that isn`t yours in your exploits a counterfeiting case should not come far I guess considering copyright/counterfeiting law tends to be the same world wide thanks to wipo. An expensive lawyer should also be able to take care of you being called a terrorist in a civil lawsuit, but wheither you would even be able to get your money back out of such a thing is anyones guess.

However, over the years, the federal government's powers have indeed expanded. Thus, while it can't mandate country-wide speeding-limits, it can withhold highway funds unless the states comply. Phrased another way, they will take your money through taxes, and refuse to give it back unless you comply.

In other words, the constitution is very much concerned with protecting states' rights, it's just that over the years the federal government has found loopholes.

In any event, my impression is that Slashdot readers are generally not 'pro-freedom'. They aren't "anti-authority", they simply want to replace the existing authority with themselves. In other words, they want to be free to live as they would like, but they are not willing to extend that same right to others.

For example, the GILC does not promote liberty as a concept, but the freedoms it wants for itself. For example, it's principle is to extend the Internet to poor countries -- by taxing the rich. It believes in prohibiting descrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, etc. It is therefore against allowing racists the freedom to practice what they want (such as holing up in compounds and marrying their cousins :-).

Take for example the word "hacker". The community outside of Slashdot uses one definition of the word, the Slashdot community uses another. Rather than fight for the simple freedom to use whatever definition people want, they fight to make everyone else conform to their definition.

EU is preparing new legistaltion, which would make compulsory data retention possible forthe member states. The crusial vote on Directive on the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector is scheduled for 29 May. More detailed information about the directive and backgrounds can be found from here.

GILC members have launced also a lobbying campaing including an open letter, which can be signed here.

Here's also Marco Cappato's (the person in charge of the directive in European Parliament) press release about the situation:

PRIVACY/EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: CAPPATO (RADICALS) "PPE AND PSE TABLE IN THE EP THE COUNCIL PROPOSALS : IN THIS WAY EUROPE WOULD AUTHORISE DATA RETENTION OF EUROPEAN CITIZENS' INTERNET AND TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS"

Brussels, 23 may 2002

European PPE (conservatives) and PSE (socialists) have tabled yesterday common amendments to the Cappato report on privacy in electronic communications, that take over the Council positions on all main issues. Their content is in striking contradiction with the EP first reading position as confirmed by the EP Civil Liberties Committee during the second reading.
The discussion in the EP will take place on the 29th of May in Brussels, while the vote will follow on the next day.

Declaration by Marco Cappato, MEP of the Lista Bonino/Radical Party and EP draftsman
on the EU Commission proposal on the protection of privacy in electronic communications:

"With these amendments, PPE and PSE have abandoned the stance that the EP had taken in first reading and confirmed in second reading in the EP Civil Liberties committee, without getting any politically meaningful concession from the Council.
Ana Palacio Vallelersundi (PPE Spanish MEP), President of the Civil Liberties committee (and Spanish conservative Government representative in the Convention) has promoted the tabling in the EP of amendments that take over the (Spanish conservative) Presidency of the Council gaining the support of the Socialist group in the EP, with the only aim of avoiding the conciliation procedure between the Council and the EP and allowing the Spanish Presidency to close successfully the dossier.
PPE MEPs, that had supported until now the freedom for Member States to decide on the regime to adopt on unsolicited commercial communications, opt-out on directories and cookies, now obey to the Spanish Presidency indications and unite with the PSE in supporting a European opt-in system - although in a softened version - in all the abovementioned cases.
But the most controversial issue is that of the powers the Council wants to give to Member States to impose to Telecom and Internet service providers the retaining of data concerning citizens' communications, SMS, emails, Internet surfing. The PPE-PSE amendment (that goes beyond the legal basis of the directive, that is an internal market measure) inserts in the articles the possibility for Member States to provide for data retention, while guarantees for citizens' privacy are left to a reference to the general principles of community law and to the EU Treaty. The reference to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is relegated in the PPE-PSE amendment in the recitals (while the EP had included it in the articles).
I appeal to MEPs to ask them to vote following their conscience and not on a party basis, and to follow my request to delete from the articles of the directive the reference to data retention of citizens' communications."

For more informations:
Marco Cappato offices: 0032 2 2847496
mcappato@europarl.eu.int www.radicalparty.org

Okay, so anybody care to list some equivalents? I think Electronic Frontier Canada is about the closest we have up here in the frosty north. There's also Electronic Frontiers Australia, and the Global Internet Liberty Coalition. Anyone know any others?

- This sig for sale or rent...cheap

Learning to use the traditional remailer network takes some time and effort. And this time and effort pays off handsomely by providing the user with a highly secure method to communicate privately and anonymously. But many privacy-minded folks (and their ranks are increasing daily!) are looking for an easier and less time-intensive approach. Some are even willing to pay for it. To satisfy this niche there have arrived many new products and services that provide various combinations of anonymous email, newsgroup posting and Web-surfing with varying degrees of anonymity.

I have provided URLs for some of these services below. I have categorized them into two groups: free of charge and fee-based. Noteworthy amongst these is the fee-based Freedom Software by the Montreal-based Zero Knowledge Systems (ZKS). Launched in December 1999, Freedom is a 'privacy system' not unlike the traditional remailer network . It allows users to send email, post to newsgroups, chat and surf the Web in total privacy without having to trust third parties with their personal information. Freedom users create multiple digital identities - "nyms" - with which their online activities are associated. All data packets Freedom users send are encrypted and routed through a global privacy infrastructure called the Freedom Network, which is hosted by participating ISPs and other independent server operators. A 30-day free trial is available.

The package has been criticized <http://cryptome.org/zks-v-tcm.htm> for not being open-source. But that is changing. The source code of the kernel module of the Linux version of Freedom <http://opensource.zeroknowledge.com/> has been released; and the release of the Windows version source code is "coming soon."

Free of Charge
GILC Web-Based Remailer <http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer. html>
Hushmail <http://www.hushmail.com>
Safeweb <http://www.safeweb.com>
Zixmail <http://www.zixmail.com>
Anonymouse <http://anonymouse.is4u.de/>
COTSE <http://www.cotse.com/home.html>
Somebody.net <http://somebody.net/>
ANON.XG.NU's Web-Based Remailer <http://anon.xg.nu/remailer.html>
Chicago <http://xenophon.r0x.net/cgi-bin/mixnews-user.c gi>

Fee-Based
ZKS Freedom <http://www.freedom.net>
SkuzNET's The Internet Mail Network <http://www.theinternet.cc/ http://www.mailanon. com/>
IDcide <http://www.idcide.com>

Political News from Wired News - Cybercrime Treaty Finally Ready. After four years of haggling over the language, several countries including the United States will sign a cybercrime treaty.

WildernessCoast.org - Cybercrime Treaty Bibliography -- By Date. A wide collection of links that talk about the Cybercrime Treaty Same info sorted by title.

Council of Europe - Convention on Cybercrime.

The Convention on Cybercrime has been adopted by the Committee of Ministers during its 109th Session, on 8 November 2001 and will be opened for signature, in Budapest, on 23 November 2001.

The Convention will be the first international treaty on crimes committed via the Internet and other computer networks, dealing particularly with infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud, child pornography and violations of network security. It also contains a series of powers and procedures such as the search of computer networks and interception.

Its main objective, set out in the preamble, is to pursue a common criminal policy aimed at the protection of society against cybercrime, especially by adopting appropriate legislation and fostering international co-operation.

The Convention is the product of four years of work by Council of Europe experts, but also by the United States, Canada, Japan and other countries which are not members of the organisation.

It will be supplemented by an additional protocol making any publication of racist and xenophobic propaganda via computer networks a criminal offence.

[ ... ]

But Fred Eisner, a consultant for the Dutch government and private companies, said the draft made unfair demands on Internet service providers by asking them to track Web users' online movements.

"This draft convention lacks balance," Eisner told the assembly. "The convention explicitly gives much more power to law enforcement agencies and it has no system of checks and balances."

Bruce McConnell, president of McConnell International, a Washington-based consulting firm, said the treaty should be more forceful in protecting the privacy of Web users who are already worried about being spied on.

"There is concern that the powers of surveillance ... are not balanced by comparable protections for individuals' privacy," he said.

Maybe you trust the law-enforcement chiefs in D.C. to do the right thing. But here's the catch. The same new powers given to the United States will also handed over to Bulgaria, Romania, Azerbaijan, and other Council of Europe nations that-although officially democratic now-don't have a strong traditions of checks and balances on police power.

Do you want investigators rummaging around your clients' computer systems on warrants issued by former Soviet bloc nations?

That's the prospect that has pushed AT&T Corporation and other high-technology companies into feverishly trying to stop or at least soften the treaty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Information Technology Association of America also oppose it.

Stewart Baker is one of the chief lobbyists for the treaty opponents. As a former general counsel of the National Security Agency and recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service, he's got street cred on these issues in corporate America.

What worries Baker and his colleagues? Consider the following hypothetical: A Los Angeles screenwriter corresponds by e-mail with a neo-Nazi in Germany while researching a script. Shortly after, he finds federal agents examining the files on his home computer. The agents also visit America Online Inc. to retrieve records of the screenwriter's AOL usage.

The agents are fulfilling a warrant issued by German authorities allowing them to search for Nazi propaganda. Such material is unlawful in Germany but not in the U.S. They framed their warrant in terms of "suspected terrorist activity."

LAW.com (requires cookies) - International Treaty on Cybercrime Poses Burden on High-Tech Companies.

Maybe you're a civil libertarian, and maybe you're not. Maybe you worry about how the United States exercises its vast investigative and prosecutorial powers, and maybe you don't.

But if you counsel U.S. corporations on computer-related issues, you should be concerned about a new proposed treaty known as the "Convention on Cybercrime." The Council of Europe, a 43-nation public body created to promote democracy and the rule of law, is nominally drafting the treaty. Curiously, however, the primary architect is the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation are using a foreign forum to create an international law-enforcement regime that favors the interests of the feds over those of ordinary citizens and businesses. Their goal is to make it easier to get evidence from abroad and to extradite and prosecute foreign nationals for certain kinds of crimes.

Maybe you trust the law-enforcement chiefs in D.C. to do the right thing. But here's the catch. The same new powers given to the United States will also be handed over to Bulgaria, Romania, Azerbaijan, and other Council of Europe nations that -- although officially democratic now -- don't have a strong tradition of checks and balances on police power.

[ ... ]

Stewart Baker, a partner at Washington, D.C.'s Steptoe & Johnson, is one of the chief lobbyists for the treaty's opponents. As a former general counsel of the National Security Agency and recipient of the U.S. Department of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service, he's got street credentials on these issues in corporate America.

Slashdot | Implications Of The International Cybercrime Treaty.

SiliconValley.com part of San Jose Mercury News - Pioneer cybercrime pact tightens privacy rules.

MS-NBC - Pioneer cybercrime pact tightens privacy rules. PARIS, May 25 -- Stiff criticism from the EU and pressure groups has prompted drafters of the world's first treaty against cybercrime to tighten provisions protecting privacy online, the final text showed Friday.

[ ... ]

Against EU objections, it also limits the right of a country to reject a request from abroad to store and hand over data in potential crime cases if the requesting country thinks it could be misused.

The text says states should make sure that systems operators or other people who know how to use a certain system can be ordered to cooperate in any such a cyberprobe.

PARIS (Reuters) - Stiff criticism from the EU and pressure groups has prompted drafters of the world's first treaty against cybercrime to tighten provisions protecting privacy online, the final text showed on Friday.

The Council of Europe, a 43-state human rights watchdog, has amended the text to ensure police respect privacy rights when they follow digital trails to fight online crimes such as hacking, spreading viruses, using stolen credit card numbers or defrauding banks.

''The guarantees in the treaty have been reinforced,'' Peter Csonka, deputy head of the economic crime division at the Council's headquarters in Strasbourg, told Reuters after the Council posted the final text -- version 27 -- on its Web site.

But the treaty, which has aroused heated debate in cyberspace since its draft text became public last year, ignored calls by Internet service providers (ISPs) for fewer costly requirements on preserving data that could be linked to a crime.

It still accorded police wide powers to chase suspected cybercriminals -- powers some critics say go beyond what is legal in some Council member states or in observer countries like the United States, Canada and Japan due to sign the treaty.

ZDNet - Internet founder worried over EU cybercrime plans.

BRUSSELS --Vint Cerf, a founding father of today's Internet, said on Thursday that European Union plans for new rules to fight crime on the Web risked clashing with existing EU privacy regulations.

Cerf, who helped develop the Internet in the early 70s shortly after graduating from Stanford University and now works for WorldCom, said more secure network systems were an immediate priority for the successful development of the ubiquitous Web.

He told Reuters in an interview that Internet traffic should be retained only for billing purposes and was too cumbersome to be stored for police investigations.

Changes to a controversial treaty on cybercrime have done nothing to improve it, say civil liberty campaigners.

Next week, the Council of Europe will vote on the treaty, which has been redrafted 26 times before reaching its final version late in May.

The most recent changes were made to take into account the fears of civil liberty and privacy campaigners. But cyber-rights groups say the latest changes are purely cosmetic and have not diluted what they describe as its most pernicious sections.

The groups say that, if adopted in its current form, the treaty could lead to changes in legislation that would stifle rights to privacy and do little to curb the activities of law enforcement agencies.

[ ... ]

In December 2000, 23 organisations, banding together under the banner of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), signed a letter condemning the 25th draft of the treaty as "appalling", and warned that it handed law enforcement agencies sweeping powers to snoop and could seriously erode online privacy.

Now, three civil liberty groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International, have sent another letter to the Council of Europe outlining their "continuing concerns" over the wording of the treaty and saying that their fears have not been laid to rest.

The letter chastises the Council of Europe for refusing to open up the redrafting debates to non-governmental organisations and for, it says, ignoring the human rights and privacy concerns of organisations such as the GILC.

It goes on to say that the original criticisms still stand, and that the treaty does not pay enough attention to existing laws which safeguard human rights. It says the treaty's recommendations on protecting privacy are vague and do not go far enough.

IT industry gurus have branded the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime 'foolish, unworkable and a legal con trick'.

The controversial treaty provides a blanket legislation to deal with all forms of internet crime from hacking to online pornography.

Caspar Bowden, director of internet think-tank FIPR, said: "The Convention is essentially a legal con trick, drafted in secret by a handful of nameless bureaucrats. It equates the internet - a network of private networks - with 'cyberspace', a metaphor from science fiction.

"By this sleight of hand, the internet is defined as a public space over which law enforcement should be granted unfettered powers of surveillance and extradition," he added.

International policy-makers this week ended a round of talks aimed at setting common rules affecting online trade and commerce, but they made little progress in bridging divisions that threaten to delay the pact.

In the works for nearly a decade, the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments is still almost unknown outside international policy circles. Nevertheless, it could have broad implications for consumers and businesses by setting new rules for online copyrights, free speech and e-commerce--if it is approved.

Opposition to the treaty heated up Wednesday, when a two-week drafting session wrapped up with few concessions to critics, primarily from the United States, who say the pact threatens free speech and could force Internet service providers to become global content police.

"In a nutshell, it will strangle the Internet with a suffocating blanket of overlapping jurisdictional claims, expose every Web page publisher to liabilities for libel, defamation and other speech offenses from virtually any country, (and) effectively strip Internet service providers of protections from litigation over the content they carry," Jamie Love, director of Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), wrote in a report after the meeting.

The treaty is one of several efforts by the global community to grapple with a complicated legal issues on a borderless Web.

Four years ago, nations including the United States signed onto a World Intellectual Property Organization pact to protect copyright in the digital age. And several countries, including the United States, are hammering out the world's first cybercrime treaty, which would provide a standard for fighting online crime.

The Hague treaty differs from those efforts because it would not outline specific laws participants must follow. It's much broader, requiring participants to agree to enforce each others' laws on a variety of topics. As it stands, the treaty would require courts to enforce the commercial laws of the convention's 52 member nations, even if they prohibit actions that are legal under local laws.

BRUSSELS - The blueprint for a global code on Cyber-crime was agreed on in Strasbourg, France, Friday, paving the way for international rules governing online copyright infringement, online fraud, child pornography and hacking.

The 41 members of the Council of Europe (CoE), plus the U.S., Canada and Japan, signed on to a draft convention on cybercrime that is set to be rubber-stamped at ministerial level in September.

"Once adopted, the Convention will be the first international treaty on criminal offenses committed through the use of Internet and other computer networks," the Council of Europe said in a statement.

In September, the Council of Europe approved the Convention on cybercrime, a historic treatise that lays the foundation for legislation allowing for a greater sharing of information between countries to combat the rise of cybercrime.

The treatise isn't binding, but instead would have to be adopted into law by its 43 European member states and five outside countries including the United States, Canada and Japan.

The treaty is broad, covering crimes committed on the Internet such as fraud, child pornography and violations of computer network security. It also sets up global policing procedures for conducting computer searches, interception of e-mails, and extradition of criminal suspects.

More details on the CyberCrime Treaty can be found in the Privacy Digest archives dated September 26,2000, September 27,2000, October 09,2000, October 16,2000, October 18,2000, October 19,2000, October 25,2000, November 14,2000, November 20,2000, November 22,2000 and March 24,2001. This is not all the information at Privacy Digest and other sites so if you want to know more try a search

Political News from Wired News - Cybercrime Treaty Finally Ready. After four years of haggling over the language, several countries including the United States will sign a cybercrime treaty.

WildernessCoast.org - Cybercrime Treaty Bibliography -- By Date. A wide collection of links that talk about the Cybercrime Treaty Same info sorted by title.

Council of Europe - Convention on Cybercrime.

The Convention on Cybercrime has been adopted by the Committee of Ministers during its 109th Session, on 8 November 2001 and will be opened for signature, in Budapest, on 23 November 2001.

The Convention will be the first international treaty on crimes committed via the Internet and other computer networks, dealing particularly with infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud, child pornography and violations of network security. It also contains a series of powers and procedures such as the search of computer networks and interception.

Its main objective, set out in the preamble, is to pursue a common criminal policy aimed at the protection of society against cybercrime, especially by adopting appropriate legislation and fostering international co-operation.

The Convention is the product of four years of work by Council of Europe experts, but also by the United States, Canada, Japan and other countries which are not members of the organisation.

It will be supplemented by an additional protocol making any publication of racist and xenophobic propaganda via computer networks a criminal offence.

[ ... ]

But Fred Eisner, a consultant for the Dutch government and private companies, said the draft made unfair demands on Internet service providers by asking them to track Web users' online movements.

"This draft convention lacks balance," Eisner told the assembly. "The convention explicitly gives much more power to law enforcement agencies and it has no system of checks and balances."

Bruce McConnell, president of McConnell International, a Washington-based consulting firm, said the treaty should be more forceful in protecting the privacy of Web users who are already worried about being spied on.

"There is concern that the powers of surveillance ... are not balanced by comparable protections for individuals' privacy," he said.

Maybe you trust the law-enforcement chiefs in D.C. to do the right thing. But here's the catch. The same new powers given to the United States will also handed over to Bulgaria, Romania, Azerbaijan, and other Council of Europe nations that-although officially democratic now-don't have a strong traditions of checks and balances on police power.

Do you want investigators rummaging around your clients' computer systems on warrants issued by former Soviet bloc nations?

That's the prospect that has pushed AT&T Corporation and other high-technology companies into feverishly trying to stop or at least soften the treaty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Information Technology Association of America also oppose it.

Stewart Baker is one of the chief lobbyists for the treaty opponents. As a former general counsel of the National Security Agency and recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service, he's got street cred on these issues in corporate America.

What worries Baker and his colleagues? Consider the following hypothetical: A Los Angeles screenwriter corresponds by e-mail with a neo-Nazi in Germany while researching a script. Shortly after, he finds federal agents examining the files on his home computer. The agents also visit America Online Inc. to retrieve records of the screenwriter's AOL usage.

The agents are fulfilling a warrant issued by German authorities allowing them to search for Nazi propaganda. Such material is unlawful in Germany but not in the U.S. They framed their warrant in terms of "suspected terrorist activity."

LAW.com (requires cookies) - International Treaty on Cybercrime Poses Burden on High-Tech Companies.

Maybe you're a civil libertarian, and maybe you're not. Maybe you worry about how the United States exercises its vast investigative and prosecutorial powers, and maybe you don't.

But if you counsel U.S. corporations on computer-related issues, you should be concerned about a new proposed treaty known as the "Convention on Cybercrime." The Council of Europe, a 43-nation public body created to promote democracy and the rule of law, is nominally drafting the treaty. Curiously, however, the primary architect is the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation are using a foreign forum to create an international law-enforcement regime that favors the interests of the feds over those of ordinary citizens and businesses. Their goal is to make it easier to get evidence from abroad and to extradite and prosecute foreign nationals for certain kinds of crimes.

Maybe you trust the law-enforcement chiefs in D.C. to do the right thing. But here's the catch. The same new powers given to the United States will also be handed over to Bulgaria, Romania, Azerbaijan, and other Council of Europe nations that -- although officially democratic now -- don't have a strong tradition of checks and balances on police power.

[ ... ]

Stewart Baker, a partner at Washington, D.C.'s Steptoe & Johnson, is one of the chief lobbyists for the treaty's opponents. As a former general counsel of the National Security Agency and recipient of the U.S. Department of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service, he's got street credentials on these issues in corporate America.

Slashdot | Implications Of The International Cybercrime Treaty.

SiliconValley.com part of San Jose Mercury News - Pioneer cybercrime pact tightens privacy rules.

MS-NBC - Pioneer cybercrime pact tightens privacy rules. PARIS, May 25 -- Stiff criticism from the EU and pressure groups has prompted drafters of the world's first treaty against cybercrime to tighten provisions protecting privacy online, the final text showed Friday.

[ ... ]

Against EU objections, it also limits the right of a country to reject a request from abroad to store and hand over data in potential crime cases if the requesting country thinks it could be misused.

The text says states should make sure that systems operators or other people who know how to use a certain system can be ordered to cooperate in any such a cyberprobe.

PARIS (Reuters) - Stiff criticism from the EU and pressure groups has prompted drafters of the world's first treaty against cybercrime to tighten provisions protecting privacy online, the final text showed on Friday.

The Council of Europe, a 43-state human rights watchdog, has amended the text to ensure police respect privacy rights when they follow digital trails to fight online crimes such as hacking, spreading viruses, using stolen credit card numbers or defrauding banks.

''The guarantees in the treaty have been reinforced,'' Peter Csonka, deputy head of the economic crime division at the Council's headquarters in Strasbourg, told Reuters after the Council posted the final text -- version 27 -- on its Web site.

But the treaty, which has aroused heated debate in cyberspace since its draft text became public last year, ignored calls by Internet service providers (ISPs) for fewer costly requirements on preserving data that could be linked to a crime.

It still accorded police wide powers to chase suspected cybercriminals -- powers some critics say go beyond what is legal in some Council member states or in observer countries like the United States, Canada and Japan due to sign the treaty.

ZDNet - Internet founder worried over EU cybercrime plans.

BRUSSELS --Vint Cerf, a founding father of today's Internet, said on Thursday that European Union plans for new rules to fight crime on the Web risked clashing with existing EU privacy regulations.

Cerf, who helped develop the Internet in the early 70s shortly after graduating from Stanford University and now works for WorldCom, said more secure network systems were an immediate priority for the successful development of the ubiquitous Web.

He told Reuters in an interview that Internet traffic should be retained only for billing purposes and was too cumbersome to be stored for police investigations.

Changes to a controversial treaty on cybercrime have done nothing to improve it, say civil liberty campaigners.

Next week, the Council of Europe will vote on the treaty, which has been redrafted 26 times before reaching its final version late in May.

The most recent changes were made to take into account the fears of civil liberty and privacy campaigners. But cyber-rights groups say the latest changes are purely cosmetic and have not diluted what they describe as its most pernicious sections.

The groups say that, if adopted in its current form, the treaty could lead to changes in legislation that would stifle rights to privacy and do little to curb the activities of law enforcement agencies.

[ ... ]

In December 2000, 23 organisations, banding together under the banner of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), signed a letter condemning the 25th draft of the treaty as "appalling", and warned that it handed law enforcement agencies sweeping powers to snoop and could seriously erode online privacy.

Now, three civil liberty groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International, have sent another letter to the Council of Europe outlining their "continuing concerns" over the wording of the treaty and saying that their fears have not been laid to rest.

The letter chastises the Council of Europe for refusing to open up the redrafting debates to non-governmental organisations and for, it says, ignoring the human rights and privacy concerns of organisations such as the GILC.

It goes on to say that the original criticisms still stand, and that the treaty does not pay enough attention to existing laws which safeguard human rights. It says the treaty's recommendations on protecting privacy are vague and do not go far enough.

IT industry gurus have branded the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime 'foolish, unworkable and a legal con trick'.

The controversial treaty provides a blanket legislation to deal with all forms of internet crime from hacking to online pornography.

Caspar Bowden, director of internet think-tank FIPR, said: "The Convention is essentially a legal con trick, drafted in secret by a handful of nameless bureaucrats. It equates the internet - a network of private networks - with 'cyberspace', a metaphor from science fiction.

"By this sleight of hand, the internet is defined as a public space over which law enforcement should be granted unfettered powers of surveillance and extradition," he added.

International policy-makers this week ended a round of talks aimed at setting common rules affecting online trade and commerce, but they made little progress in bridging divisions that threaten to delay the pact.

In the works for nearly a decade, the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments is still almost unknown outside international policy circles. Nevertheless, it could have broad implications for consumers and businesses by setting new rules for online copyrights, free speech and e-commerce--if it is approved.

Opposition to the treaty heated up Wednesday, when a two-week drafting session wrapped up with few concessions to critics, primarily from the United States, who say the pact threatens free speech and could force Internet service providers to become global content police.

"In a nutshell, it will strangle the Internet with a suffocating blanket of overlapping jurisdictional claims, expose every Web page publisher to liabilities for libel, defamation and other speech offenses from virtually any country, (and) effectively strip Internet service providers of protections from litigation over the content they carry," Jamie Love, director of Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), wrote in a report after the meeting.

The treaty is one of several efforts by the global community to grapple with a complicated legal issues on a borderless Web.

Four years ago, nations including the United States signed onto a World Intellectual Property Organization pact to protect copyright in the digital age. And several countries, including the United States, are hammering out the world's first cybercrime treaty, which would provide a standard for fighting online crime.

The Hague treaty differs from those efforts because it would not outline specific laws participants must follow. It's much broader, requiring participants to agree to enforce each others' laws on a variety of topics. As it stands, the treaty would require courts to enforce the commercial laws of the convention's 52 member nations, even if they prohibit actions that are legal under local laws.

BRUSSELS - The blueprint for a global code on Cyber-crime was agreed on in Strasbourg, France, Friday, paving the way for international rules governing online copyright infringement, online fraud, child pornography and hacking.

The 41 members of the Council of Europe (CoE), plus the U.S., Canada and Japan, signed on to a draft convention on cybercrime that is set to be rubber-stamped at ministerial level in September.

"Once adopted, the Convention will be the first international treaty on criminal offenses committed through the use of Internet and other computer networks," the Council of Europe said in a statement.

In September, the Council of Europe approved the Convention on cybercrime, a historic treatise that lays the foundation for legislation allowing for a greater sharing of information between countries to combat the rise of cybercrime.

The treatise isn't binding, but instead would have to be adopted into law by its 43 European member states and five outside countries including the United States, Canada and Japan.

The treaty is broad, covering crimes committed on the Internet such as fraud, child pornography and violations of computer network security. It also sets up global policing procedures for conducting computer searches, interception of e-mails, and extradition of criminal suspects.

More details on the CyberCrime Treaty can be found in the Privacy Digest archives dated September 26,2000, September 27,2000, October 09,2000, October 16,2000, October 18,2000, October 19,2000, October 25,2000, November 14,2000, November 20,2000, November 22,2000 and March 24,2001. This is not all the information at Privacy Digest and other sites so if you want to know more try a search

There are already several ISPs in Switzerland which do also block websites, either by altering DNS entries, blocking IP numbers at the router level or blocking transparent proxies.

Unfortunately there is not much information in english, but the case has been mentioned in a GILC newsletter (GILC Alert 52, point [7]). The Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG) has some informations, but everything is in german.

There are already several ISPs in Switzerland which do also block websites, either by altering DNS entries, blocking IP numbers at the router level or blocking transparent proxies.

Unfortunately there is not much information in english, but the case has been mentioned in a GILC newsletter (GILC Alert 52, point [7]). The Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG) has some informations, but everything is in german.

The Mixmaster remailer/anonymizer has dropped several of my posts since the terrorist incident and sometimes it refuses to send my posts at all.

I suspect government intervention.

This debate has been around for a long time. In particular, things to note are:

• Britain has considered introducing a system whereby a key to decrypting the encrypted data has to be sent to the government. Here is more information from a dissenting group of privacy advocates in Britain.
• Microsoft has been accused of doing this (and I remember hearing about one time where they actually lost a server containing their only key.) There was a lot of debate over that; you can read some more abuot Microsoft's key structure here.
• Here is a long but rather interesting viewpoint of the debate about crypto.
• Don't forget (and please, tell your less technically-inclined friends) that crypto is NOT just used to send secret terrorist information. It is used by major retailers on the Internet to encrypt sensitive personal information such as credit card numbers.

A hypothetical example of my biggest personal fear regarding crypto follows:

An overzealous government tries to stomp out terrorism by requiring crypto backdoors. For the sake of argument, let's say it is the United States. Now, there are millions of hackers out there. A lot of them are smart enough to realize that if the government required keys to be kept in a central location, a hack of this location would be the biggest hack EVER. It would contain ALL keys to credit card numbers used by major Internet retailers. It would contain sensitive healthcare information. It would contain numerous trade secrets sent by company representatives.

Before we go any further, let's say that it was hacked. Now Joe Consumer knows his personal information was sent to Amazon.com. Amazon was required to give the key to decrypting it to the government. Now some terrorist has it. The government blames rogue hackers. "Well, whatever," Joe thinks to himself. "All I know is that they got my information from the Internet. I'm certainly not going to buy anything from there again."

You see, in this (albeit alarmist) scenario, the government has facilitated what could possibly be the biggest terrorist attack EVER, and ruined e-commerce in the process.

As an offhand note, do you think the government would use a system like Passport to do this? If so, we're in for a really tough ride. Just something to think about.

P.S. While I abhor the thought of keeping data in one place, I do support the idea of basic security regulations so that I know that when I purchase things online, my data IS actually being encrypted instead of being sent via plaintext email to the site owner.

Mixmaster doesn't work anymore...

There are a couple of reasons for the EU wanting to drop encryption restrictions and the US being pissed off:

• The EU parliament commissioned Duncan Campbell to produce the
  STOA report which details the Echelon project and the fact the NSA sells commercial secrets to enable US companies to steal massive global contracts from under the noses of their EU counterparts. The French were so affected by the revelations they switched from the most draconian encryption policy (they banned all encryption, even by their own citizens) to the most liberal (instant raising to 128-bit with a view to dropping limits asap).
  
• The scandals involving both Lotus Notes (confirmed) and Microsoft (allegedly) deliberately leaking private keys to the NSA. The Swedish government was publicly outraged as their MPs use Lotus Notes for confidential communications. There is now an aura of distrust around US 'blessed' software and we will see a push towards Open Source software as well as a drop on encryption export restrictions.
  

So is the future looking rosier? Not for us in the UK, which is one of the most oppresive governments in the world. Take a look at the watered down RIP bill (you can only imagine what the original bill was like, hint: key escrow). For the rest of Europe, will they convince businesses to spend effort and manpower in creating secure systems as opposed to buying cheap, painless, out-of-the-box NSA friendly software? A nice but distant dream.

Phillip.

wether or not the freedom of the Internet jeopardizes the freedom to USE the Internet "

Very eloquent and accurate.

On the other hand, your flame was rather insulting,

Whenever someone moans about "the Feds", I have to ask what the hell are YOU (yes, you) doing about it? Are you expecting someone else to step in and solve these problems?

Who the hell am I? Well for starters I'm an over 40 PHB who lives in the US and has been on the net since the old days, pre 1980. My entire career for the last 20+ years has been the internet, starting long before GUIs.
What the hell am I doing about it? Plenty, you should be as well. All of us should, not just because it's our livelyhood, because it's our privacy and our basic freedoms as well. Personally, I have regular dialog with many elected officials on many different levels. I'm no stranger to the telecom lobbists or in my Representetive or Senators offices on capital hill and my state capital. I support the Electronic Frontier Foundation , Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA), Digital Future Coalition (DFC), and the TRUSTe Privacy Policy Certification Program as well as several others both monetarily and with my time. Do you?

Am I expecting someone else to step in and solve these problems? No, I am involved, are you?

Although you had a good point in your post, I feel the impact of it got lost in the flames, instead of flaming posters on /., try using some of that effort to get the laws and the policy changed, you might be surprised at what one person can do.

Now that we've done all the complaining about the law and the DCMA, next step is to get involved.Here's how, Constructive communication to the folks who can make a difference beats whining every time.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
US House of Representatives
US Senate
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC)
Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA)
Digital Future Coalition (DFC)
TRUSTe Privacy Policy Certification Program

Electronic Frontier Foundation
US House of Representatives
US Senate
Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC)
Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA)
Digital Future Coalition (DFC)
TRUSTe Privacy Policy Certification Program

Unless someone offers a critic of existing organizations, with changes to be made - I'd argue we may have to many organizations and creating another would continue to fragment what influence there is to be had.

Or in other words, what "we" don't need is to defuse our resources by building up a new organization, but use those resources to strengthen or affect change within existing organizations.

There are a lot out there. I started with three:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

The Center for Democracy and Technology

From there I was able to also dig up links to:

The Internet Education Foundation

The Media Access Project (non-profit telecomm lawyers, interesting..)

The Global Internet Liberty Campaign

Digital Future Coalition

Let alone those that aren't "purely" technical - such as the ACLU or People for the American Way, that touch on things like 1st Amendment (yep, American biased I am) rights. I could keep going and going, but if I didn't bore you ten lines ago, you would be now.

The likelihood of having THE "geek organization" are slim. Finding issues we can individually devote our resources to and building coalitions where interests overlap is a more realistic goal.

Here's a survey that covers most nations' cryptography policies. Canada gets a good score. So does my home country, Finland, even though the Finnish government has had to reluctantly give in a bit under strong pressure from the US (probably more or less direct threats of commercial retaliation).

Marko

Here's a survey that covers most nations' cryptography policies. Canada gets a good score. So does my home country, Finland, even though the Finnish government has had to reluctantly give in a bit under strong pressure from the US (probably more or less direct threats of commercial retaliation).

Marko

Some useful Links:

Global Internet Liberty Campaign www.gilc.org

Electonic Frontiers Australia, www.efa.org.au

and of course
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, www.eff.org

The Electronic Privacy Information Center

And here's an idea: this sounds like a PERFECT reason to boycott the Sydney 2000 Olympics. After all, it always works best to get a country by the short-and-curlies if you REALLY want its' attention. . . .