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U.S. And EU Ready International Cybercrime Treaty
Nightspore writes: "Yes, while you slept last night another supra-governmental body was hard at work readying a shiny new set of chains for you. Read more on how the US and EU are putting the finishing touches on their international cybercrimes treaty. The treaty will force all signatories (i.e. your government) to make illegal the 'import and distribution of devices used for hacking.' Signatories also would be required to 'provide law enforcement authorities with the ability to conduct computer searches and seize computer data.'
"
Cool! Where do we sign?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, let's see, there goes every compiler, text editor, hand tool, hardware, heck, pencils and paper can be used too! Better take those away!
öööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööö
How Jaded Are You?
"tools for hacking" you mean computers?
"Sorry, but I don't there's anything charming about ignorance and carelessness." -LordNimon
After all, they aren't that different than the rules that apply in the offline world. The legality of an act shouldn't vary depending on if something happens offline or online, and enforcement should be the same way.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
provide law enforcement authorities with the ability to conduct computer searches and seize computer data. better remember rm -rf /
While they're at it, why don't they forbid the import/export of items that can be used to commit murder? Things like automobiles, tobacco, alcohol... oh, wait; that's right. Anything that dulls the senses is good; anything that sharpens the mind is bad. Silly me, next thing you know, I'll start doubting what Ministry of Truth tells me...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
The Council of Europe is, therefore, more far-reaching than the EU as it includes all of those countries that didn't join the EU (like Norway). Even Moldavia and Liechtenstein are on the Council.
So, essentially, this is even worse that you might have thought. There is pretty much no "western data haven" to work from.
--
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
If you're in a country oustside of those two unions, you're still home free. Countries that have little or no views about "cybercrime" such as cracking and piracy - remain uneffected.
The big question, of course, is what a hacking device is?
I mean, if they can ban a "hacking device" they have just been vague enough to sieze anything from a computer, except MAYBE the moniter. And then consider that software product could be a hacking tool. Port scanners and security auditing tools are widely used for cracking. But on the other side they are used to combat it too.
We are hopeless, for when this passes, the government will have complete control over any and all electronics, and they cannot be held accountable.
Good luck, we'll need it.
A friendly reminder that ratified treaties supercede the constitution. That makes sense when the treaty ends a war and the option is rewriting the entire Constitution; it makes much less sense when it will provide a de facto end run around reasonable limits on domestic law enforcement.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Now I've seen it all!
Appended to the end of comments I post? 120 chars?!
For example, they said, security testing would not be banned, because prosecutors must show there was intent to commit an illegal act.
If this can trump the DMCA, then DeCSS can't itself be illegal. Only if you can prove a user was going to use it for illegal purposes could you prosecute - and then that user only. But you couldn't stop, say, DeCSS being part of an Open Source DVD player, because the intent there is clearly not criminal: the intent is to be able to watch the DVDs you purchased on your computer.
However, even though the USA Today article probably only skims the surface (and like everything in the popular press, is probably fairly inaccurate), there were some deeply worrying things in that article. Still - there's always Sealand!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The treaty will force all signatories (ie your government) to make illegal the "import and distribution of devices used for hacking".
Sounds like they want to outlaw computers.
There's nothing like an overly-broad wording to turn the most well-intentioned concept into a tool of oppression.
(Though i also doubt the intent of this is entirely noble at heart.)
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Does anyone else see this as obvious? If they want to regulate the import and distribution of devices used for hacking... well, obviously, you're going to have to regulate and monitor internet traffic, world-wide, just to make sure that nothing that violates this treaty is getting through.
"Sorry, folks, just passing through looking for suspicious data... really, we hate the idea of doing this; it's just so much more work for us, but hey! - it's in that damn treaty we signed. Now... your papers, please."
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
So I guess gcc and modperl will be made illegal? I can't vouch for anyone else, but those are the tools I use to hack.
Wait, I can see it now: "If we made keyboards illegal, then only crackers would be using keyboards." (ala NRA)
Senseless legislation. When will Lars run for Senate?
Dictionaries are for loosers.
Does this mean my local police deparment won't laugh and hang up when I call and report that script-kiddiez just erased three years of work on my system?
Does anyone know of some sort of campaign against this?
For that matter, exactly what "hacking devices" are restricted? I agree that this treaty needs to be handled carefully and has the potential to restrict legitimate uses but I wouldn't file it in the the this-is-really-bad dept just on the basis of this article. Of course, given how people are flying off the handle over the NSA backdoor story which doesn't have a shred of evidence behind it, there's certainly not much chance of perspective here.
Incidentally, I'd note this story as evidence that the cyberpunk mentality so popular here may be fun but isn't having the slightest effect on the rest of the world. I'd propose that people make a clear distiction between legitimate and illicit uses of technology and point out when legislation threatens the valid activities, instead of karma whoring about how Napster isn't a piracy tool because the RIAA is ripping off the musicians. Probably not much chance of that, either.
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Just what I wanted. So when does my linux laptop become a hacking tool? When I have a portscanner? Or is it already one.
No governmental organization should be making this kind of law. Nor should these 'cybercrimes' be prosecuted in any way. What's the worst thing that you can imagine? Your credit card being 'stolen?' Your identity being 'taken?'
There are definitely some very bad things that can be done to and with computers...and they are being done, by governmental organizations. They are trying to put up borders and checkpoints where none are needed, and extracting taxes for the service. Thank you, USA, for arresting me! Now let me pay my taxes so you can enforce your laws.
But it's a good thing they're doing this...if they didn't, people might get the idea that we don't need physical borders and checkpoints either. Then we'd be screwed...and what would happen to the 'criminals' who've broken other 'laws' like drug possession...they might be set free! Uh oh.
Well, it's a good thing that I still have free speech and can say this stuff...hey, where are you taking me...guys...
controversial policy adopted domestically, they
pressure an international group to adopt it,
and then bring it back to the U.S. as an
international treaty - which obliges Congress
to enact it,"
Just look at the thread before, I get frigthened at this combination, subverting software companies (to s**t at their customers), suppressing free information exchange and forbidding the usage and/or information about tools to check your system appears quite systematic to me.
will the next step be an Internet license and an allow list which information is allowed ?
Brave new world
This treaty is ripe with ways to abuse it. What constitutes a hacking device? A perl script that probes a network? If I run a perl script like that, by this treaty the US will have to provide a way for law enforcement to search my home and confiscate my equipement. How is qualified to judge what exactly is a hacking device.
This is very scary stuff.....
How long does it take to get sued by the MPAA?
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
I can "hack" anything with anything.
I can hack a cuecat with a soldering iron, a screwdriver and a multimeter.
I can hack a computer program with Visual Studio (built in debugger and disassembler).
I can hack a network program with ordinary windows (netmon) or unix (tcpdump/ethereal).
I can hack a lock with a paperclip.
I can hack a mixmaster with a pointed stick.
I can hack congress with a lobbyist.
I can take G. Gordon Liddy's advice for dealing with government agents storming my house.
I can move to a free country. Or maybe I can't.
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
or dissasembler or packet sniffer or compiler or ..... a computer, or your brain - doh! - gotta ban those 'tools for hacking' - we wouldn't want any one thinking outside their box (er cell) around here ....
No way do I believe that the Supreme Court would hold that a treaty overrides the Constitution. However, I sure wouldn't mind an amendment which holds the limitations the Constitution places on our government, and the rights and privileges recognized thereunder, override the terms of any and all treaties which are to the contrary. Even freedoms need backups.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Does this mean someone in any of the signatory countries can sue the NSA for hacking into communications? Ex-NSA Analyst Warns Of NSA Security Backdoors
I found the statement in the article that the US Congress would be obliged to pass laws in support of this treaty a little disingenuous. This statement would be true if the US Senate approves the treaty. Under the US constitution, no treaty to which we are a signatory becomes legally binding until ratified by the Senate...no Administration can run off to foreign powers and conclude a treaty that gives them legislative powers. So, if they've been unwilling to pass the laws unilaterally, no signed treaty is going to make them do so any faster.
Now could the Senate ratify a treaty requiring these laws be passed? Sure, and they very well might, but they are not under any obligation to do so (look at the Chemical Weapons Convention, the League of Nations, etc...). And that is a different issue than this article implies.
Like, say, switchblades, double-edged knives, guns, computers, cars, houses, countries (US rape of Mexico, German rape of most of Europe). Much safer life here in my mud hut with no fire and only what I can cultivate with my bare hands. Oh, and the maurauding bands that own all the guns don't bother me much, anyway. Since phones are illegal, all I have to do is run the three miles to the local police department, where they will arrest me for disturbing the peace.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
Today, in a major coup for international governments, a treaty ratified by the EU and the US (among others) officially makes everything illegal. Under the section innocently labelled "hacking devices", such obvious implements such as computers, modems and network cards are naturally banned, but so are so-called "social hacking" tools, such as telephones, pieces of paper (which may be used to write down passwords, clothing (which may be used to disguise someone), cars (which allow criminals to move to the scene of the hacking). Now that everything is illegal, everyone who is alive has been asked to report to jail, where you will be put to work as cheap slave labor for the super-mega-international-government-corporation producing inexpensive T-shirts for resale in parts of the universe that have more money.
This reporter, for one, is glad that he no longer has to worry about breaking the law-- it is with complete certainty that I can now say "No matter what I am doing, it is definitely illegal."
The last paragraph:
When asked about privacy concerns with the treaty, Csonka said: "These concerns may be legitimate, but they could be raised in relation to any international treaty. Harmonization of laws is necessary to avoid a legal jungle on the Net."
Right. Keep up the good work, guys, and thank you. Hey, what are those funny red dots, are there snipers around
We need to start exporting script kidd3z -- and it'll help the trade deficit!
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
Screw local or state or even federal...
I can be an INTERNATIONAL criminal!
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!
"...heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Hacking is defined as 'unauthorised data-access', what about reverse engeneering, what about writing a compatible protocol. Will 'patent infringement' be hacking? What about Sony Playstation emulators?
This is too bad. Supposedly, (just hypothatically) I find the magical holy grail of factoring primes... is that hacking? Can I publish this?
This is too bad, I thought I'd be safe from US laws here in Europe, reading slashdot I realize that all sorts of laws and lawsuits will deteriate my freedom. So this will change then?
What's next, regulations on internet protocols? Man is allowed to browse and mail, kill IRC, kill Napster, kill Gnutella?
This smells like a tool for technological censorship... will I need a license-to-programm in future?
Bizar technology?
Hacking devices??
Sounds a little too vague... very much like the CDA.
~LE
"Evil will always win, because Good is dumb" - Lord Helmet Space Balls
Aside from stupid enforcement, this could actually be a really good thing
A while back at a certain gov't job, we had an attacker break in. We did trace him, found out for the most part who he was and everything.
He was from a EU country, and we couldn't do *anything* about it. It was really frustrating, because what he did went far beyond just the curiosity approach that I advocate to a point.
His intent was damage, and instead of someone being punished for their crime myself and another coworker had to stay late for days digging through logs of other machines to find out how deep the damage went. That's not fair.
However this could be the worst thing that we could come up against. Depending upon how far they want to take the 'device used for hacking'.
I mean.. hell, look back to the young isreali Edin Tenebaum, aka Analyzer. That guy was funny, and aided those kids (by aiding more or less told them information they needed) to break into the pentagon.
Edin in my opinion is completely innocent. Telling someone how to shoot a gun doesn't make them an accessory to murder.
nerdfarm.org
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
According to the doccument, ISP's should facilitate the investigation team by keeping track of who is using the system when, and then turn this info over to the team. At first, this doesn't really sound that bad. I mean, you want to help all you can in a criminal investigation, right?
;)
The problem comes in the doublestandard that is held between the real and digital worlds, that can quite possibly bring about 1984 in a very real sense; or digital sense, if you prefer
Think about it: We can step onto a bus, get off at a stop, secretly break into a building, and do whatever it is we're doing in this example. OK, it's not the greatest analogy, but lets fly with it for a moment.
Now, for comparison, someone is using XYZ SDSL, breaks into a computer system, and does whatever they want to do. I know all the flaws with this example but just think about it -- it's hard to like the digital world with real life.
In any case, by the new laws that seem OK which are attempting to be passed, XYZ DSL service would be required to keep logs of users, users to identies, and possibly what their users are doing online. This is like the bus driver in the first example being required to take down name, addresses, and phone numbers when you get on the bus, then storing where you got off and when in a notebook. For some strange reason, the very same people who don't react to the digital laws would be screaming murder if a government tried to pass a law like this.
Just because we have the ability to packetsniff, parse, and store potentially illegal info (or notes which can help prosecute) automatically with scripts doesn't mean we should. I maintain a large office over a single T1, and I admit I am almost always sniffing and parsing the data that's going through the pipe. But I do this in a manner that is consistant with the rest of my ethics: I specificlally filter OUT (so I don't see) port 25 and port 110 traffic. I scan port 21 and 23 for the sole purpose of screaming at the people who try to use these ports *grin*. Often I find people viewing porn or whatnot, but IMHO that's there business. Even though it is against company policy I will never notify anyone of this misuse. About the only thing I do crack down on is Napster (only because of the bandwidth issue). Mainly I want an idea of what's going over my network.
What scares me is I know the government won't have such scruples. For some reason intercepting and making photocopies of letters is illegal; yet we're trying to legalize sniffing email...
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Interesting way for the executive branch to twist congress's arm. What I'm really interested in comes when one of these treaties forces a law to be passed that is obviously not constitutional, and the supreme court throws it out. From the sketchy details in the article, this one may be along those lines (speech and due process come to mind).
Kinda puts the government in an interesting bind, the treaty requires them to support these laws, where the foundation for our government effectively says they can't do it.
It also would ban the sale, purchase, import and distribution of devices used for hacking....
/. gripe fest over the meaning of the word "hacker/hacking").
And in related news today: Axes, hatchets and machetes are now selling like hotcakes on Ebay in anticipation of the ban. (Time for another
Lizzy Bordon took an axe
and sunk it deep into a Vax.
When she saw what she had done
she turned and hacked apart a Sun. -author unknown
So if I write a script that looks through my code for potential buffer overflows due to stupidly called subroutines, that would seem illegal due to the fact it could also be used to hack my code and exploit it. I even could use the "find" and "grep" tools to do this - are they now illegal?
At first glance, this sounds like it will force security through obscurity, and of course the criminals will find a way around it. It's just another charge to bring against someone when they are caught, if they are caught. This sounds almos as good as the US electronic signatures act, where almost any web browser and any link could be a contract.
The Council of Europe members are from many countries:
Albania (address) Mr Paskal Milo, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Andorra (address) Mr Albert Pintat Santolaria, Minister for External Relations of the Principality of Andorra
Austria (address) Mrs Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs
Belgium (address) Mr Louis Michel, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Bulgaria (address) Mrs Nadezhda Mihailova, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Croatia (address) Mr. Tonino Picula, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Cyprus (address) Mr Ioannis Kasoulides, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Czech Republic (address) Mr Jan Kavan, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Denmark (address) Mr Niels Helveg Petersen, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Estonia (address) Mr Toomas Hendrik Ílves, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Finland (address) Mr Erkki Tuomioja, Minister for Foreign Affairs
France (address) Mr Hubert Védrine, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Georgia (address) Mr Irakli Menagarishvili, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Germany (address) Mr Joschka Fischer, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Greece (address) Mr Giorgos Papandreou, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Hungary (address) Mr János Martonyi, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Iceland (address) Mr Halldor Asgrimsson, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Ireland (address) Mr Brian Cowen, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Italy (address) Mr Lamberto Dini, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Latvia (address) Mr Indulis Berzins, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Liechtenstein (address) Mrs Andrea Willi, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Lithuania (address) Mr Algirdas Saudargas, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Luxembourg (address) Mrs Lydie Polfer, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, External trade.
Malta (address) Mr Joe Borg, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Moldova (address) Mr Nicolae Tabacaru, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Netherlands (address) Mr Jozias van Aartsen, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Norway (address) Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Poland (address) Mr Bronislaw Geremek, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Portugal (address) Mr Jaime José Matos Gama, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Romania (address) Mr Petre Roman, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Russian Federation (address) Mr Igor Ivanov, Minister for Foreign Affairs
San Marino (address) Mr Gabriele Gatti, Minister for Foreign and Political Affairs
Slovak Republic (address) Mr Eduard Kukan, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Slovenia (address) Mr Dimitrij Rupel, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Spain (address) Mr Josep Pique i Camps, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Sweden (address) Ms Anna Lindh, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Switzerland (address) Mr Joseph Deiss, Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
"the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (address) Mr Aleksandar Dimitrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Turkey (address) Mr Ismail Cem, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Ukraine (address) Mr Borys Tarasiuk, Minister for Foreign Affairs
United Kingdom (address) The Rt. Hon. Robin Cook, MP, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
i guess Michael Dell, Linus Torvalds, and Bill Gates are among the many violating this new treaty?
right?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
... from now on only non-programmable calculators allowed: +, -, *, /, ln, some geometric functions and no memory registers!
The nice thing about Windows is: it does not just crash; it displays a nice little dialog box and let's you press 'OK'
Doesn't apply to me because I only crack within my country.
==== Warning:this poster contains subject matter that may be offensive. Flaming discretion is advised.
Sir we are here to take all your computer data. Including some of the vintage bootlegs on MP3 that could not be found anywhere else, and those neato shell scripts. YOUR government has given us the permission to take them since you are a threat to internet security (that and being 1 million times the size we do pretty much what we want in YOUR country now). Please do not resist us in any way or we will use any force needed.
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
Treaties do not supercede the constitution, as it, and only it, is the supreme law of the land.
Article 1, Section. 10,Clause 1: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State; (See Note 10)--between Citizens of different States, --between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
And the kicker:
Article 6, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
So, who gets to define "hacking devices"? After all, isn't a computer a hacking device? And software designed to probe networks to test security, as well as a billion other things. So what's next? Will I need to have a permit to have a port scanner? I'm all for cracking down on cybercrime, but this level of control scares me. I see another case of the gov't making innocent people criminals just for having "hacking devices". And so what if it's illegal to have "hacking devices". If criminals cared about the law, they wouldn't be criminals, would they?
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I just love living in a free country -- a true democracy where, through the process of voting, we get to choose which people will control our lives. Now that's what I call freedom!
--
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Better rig up a valve to open up a small tank of acid onto the hard drive platters. Its rumored the feds can recover disks that have been formatted up to 16 times.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
'Laws' being proposed are,
... What's an unauthorized access? Pinging a machine? Reading a webpage meant for internal use but not secured? Attempting to log in as user 'ftp' on a non-public ftp server? Portscanning? What is a portscan? Does telnetting to ports 21, 23, 25, and 80 out of curiousity to see what they're running count as a 'portscan'? D'oh.
People with access to information must make all reasonable effort to provide it to the authorities. Ie, 'We need to see all your server logs because we think the cracker routed through your network' or 'We need your entire anonymous remailer database so we can do traffic analysis to determine which 17 accounts belong to the cracker'; With a warrant... without... ? Will it be a 'crime' to not turn over this information on request? (Well, not for long in the USA but who knows about other countries; the courts will make sure warrants and/or subpoenas are still required to coerce information, but it could take time if the law isn't written that way.)
'Cracker Tools' being outlawed; to draw an analogy, 'lets outlaw drills because they can be used to drill out lock cylinders and gain entry into people's houses!' Uhm. What's a 'computer hacking tool' anyway? Netcat? I'm using it right now to test ftp protocols by hand. nmap? I use it to check that I didn't miss any ports when locking down a box. Nessus? Satan? They'll tell you exactly where a machine is vulnerable. Your machine, somebody else's machine, how are they supposed to know? (Actually, with Nessus you already have to be inside the target to use it, though I'm sure it could be used as a codebase to start a dedicated cracking tool.) My point is, run a security 'auditor' in combination with a 'stealth' portscan and compile a handful of 'demonstration' exploits from securityfocus and you've got yourself a handy-dandy skr1pt k1ddy level cracking-kit built out of security admin tools. Never mind the prior restraint/free speech issues implied since code is text is speech, dammit.
'Illegal to do unauthorized access'
If you ask me, the only 'computer crime' law we need is to make it illegal to destroy or alter information on a computer that you don't have authorized access too, (where 'alter' does not include doing things that generate log entries, etc, etc, long list of exceptions to describe normal behaviour). Yeah, this means if someone cracks your computer without overwriting files or anything nasty like that (like, maybe they sniff your in-the-clear telnet or ftp password transmission...) that you can't do jack about it in court, but so what?
Everyone always wants to draw parallels to the real world: In the real world you don't arrest people for walking into the lobby; you don't arrest people for using the bathroom without buying anything even though it says 'customers only'; you don't arrest people for looking in through the window of a jewelry store or even rattling the cage over the windows. You -do- arrest people for spray painting on the walls of the bathroom or for throwing a brick through the window of the jewelry store and running off with a pocketful of diamonds. Where the access lines between 'use' and 'abuse' are is entirely too vague and if we're not careful the government(s) will write up a set of laws that making any new network protocol illegal - not by intent, but because they're politicians and lawyers, not engineers, and won't know the implications of what they're writing! (Presumably they have enough technical advisors to know the -explicit- meaning of what they're writing, but long term implications are another matter.)
Any-way. The article is very vague; maybe safeguards are being built in to prevent the worries I describe; maybe they aren't; maybe they're penciled in but maybe they'll get erased; keep an eye on it, anyway, because it is -not- 'mostly harmless'.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Like computers, compilers, operating systems, debuggers, disassemblers, editors, IDEs and so on?
Just whose leg are these morons pulling? Will I have to register dangerous tools like compilers?
Someone else helpfully supplied this quote from the US constitution:
Article 6, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which
shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The obvious interpretation of this is that a
treaty supercedes a STATE law or STATE constitution. Any other inerpretation simply makes no sense.
PeterM
>>>When asked about privacy concerns with the treaty, Csonka said: "These concerns may be legitimate, but they could be raised in relation to any international treaty. Harmonization of laws is necessary to avoid a legal jungle on the Net.">>> Somehow I don't see privacy concerns coming up on most treaties, as they deal with how one country deals with another, such as disarmament, trade, or tariffs, etc. This treaty deals with requiring a country to pass laws regarding it's own citizens. IANAL or IANAC(congressperson), but maybe some experts out there can answer this... is this treaty legal anyway? The Congress, IIRC, cannot tread upon a suceeding Congress. ie, even a bill passed by the house or senate that has not been passed by both houses or signed by the President (or vetoed) does not pass to the next session of Congress. So how can a treaty set forth requirements of laws to be passed by a subsequent session of Congress? This is not foreign policy treaties or trade treaties, but a requirement to pass laws. Also, since treaties are the perview of the president (whether or not ratified by the Senate, they are not reviewed by the HOUSE) this seems to permit the executive branch of government to mandate legislative functions and usurp the legislative branch of the government, which the framers insured the Constitution would prohibit, does it not?? It seems a treaty doomed to be violated, or the Congress and the Constitution might as well go home. And this treaty is being lead by DOJ people? Damn, now I KNOW it's time for a change...send Reno back to Miami and clean house at the DOJ. This is absurd. It makes the clipper chip idea seem tame.
The treaty will force all signatories (i.e. your government) to make illegal the 'import and distribution of devices used for hacking.'
Well, I guess that means...Great, UNIX itself! Just what if M$ is really doing this as a ploy to make all UNIX illegal? Heh, imagine that.
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And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
"devices used for hacking" might be just the phrase used by journalist of ZD. Meanwhile the threat from this proposal goes far beyond "banning computers as devices used for hacking"
Read it!:
Signatories also would be required to provide law enforcement authorities with the ability to conduct computer searches and seize computer data. In addition, the proposed treaty would require those with access to or knowledge of computer data sought by authorities to provide "all necessary information, as is reasonable," for authorities to obtain the data. "These computer-specific investigative measures will also imply cooperation by telecom operators and Internet service providers, whose assistance is vital to identify computer criminals and secure evidence of their misdeeds,"
Speaking of which, interesting approach taken by FreeNet:
the objective is that the node operator can plausibly deny any knowledge of the contents of her datastore
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And by the way, isn't it a common practice to write huge Agreement to remove all right from the customer and NOT to use it for a while. I mean, isn't it what all big business doing here?
But no less scary. Did anyone notice that only hacking "devices" were explicitly mentioned ? What about software ? I use programs at home, on my own network, to debug same and some of these could certainly be construed as "hacking" programs. What if these were to become "illegal" ? Will the police come to my house to look for "devices" ? Is my computer a hacking "device" ? LOL - well, actually, not laughing at all. JB PS: Sorry if you saw this on the other article - I mis-clicked . . .
but as much as I disagree with a lot of what RMS says, The Right to Read is certainly seeming more-and-more a reality. First you can't reverse-engineer anything (DMCA), and now they're going to ration debuggers and compilers? shudder...
This is too bad, I thought I'd be safe from US laws here in Europe,...
/. rather than contacting your representatives about this and voicing your concerns. They *do* let you do that in your country, da?
WTF, why is this a case of you being subject to US laws. Apparently we haven't even ratified this treaty on this side of the pond, and even though the linked article even displays a certain anti-US tone through it's choice of quotes, noone is forcing you to sit on your ass and whine about this problem on
Ò
Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
You left out Article II section 1, which specified that "He" is the president. Out of context and coupled with the constitution's peculiar capitalization, it reads like we're talking about the Divine One, who's free to enter into any damn treaties He pleases, I suppose. Perhaps that's what's missing from this treaty: a little divine intervention. I wouldn't want to be in Brussels or Washington when the helfire and brimstone comes a-raining down like on Sodom and Gomorrah of yore, smiting the corrupt tribes of Europe and USiA for this latest of ther abominations.
Will computers be illegal? No
Will encryption tools be illegal? Maybe, or restricted
Will security tools that can be used for hacking be illegal? Most likely
Remember the ILOVEYOU virus. I guess VBScript and MS Outlook are gone too (although I wouldn't be upset about the latter... )
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
As someone else mentioned concern for ISP's that may be forced to store loads of "traffic data" for long periods of time, Article 17 seems to indicate that the gov't would be responsible for any storage of data, relieving the ISP of need for extra disk space, or liability in storing data.
There's probably more I'd like to mention, but its time to go home!
... is here. I'm not sure if it's the latest draft though, it's dated 27th April 2000.
In my view hacking is the art(?) of writing/cutting code and cracking is the act which is normally associated with cybercrime. So if they are banning all hacking tools does that mean M$ will not be able to ship Notepad with its Windows OS or Linux with Emacs etc. I think they should perhaps get someone who does more than simply uses a computer on their little multi-national panel, before they manage to get themselves in an arkward situation.
mv
If you'd like to see how this type of law can be applied, look no further than our friends in the UK. If you attempt to enter the U.K. with a computer, they want to inspect it for illicit material like child porn. If you have encrypted data on it and the authorities have reason to think that you know the key, you can be thrown in the slammer for not giving it to them. At the least, they'll keep the machine until you give them the key, or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.
Blegh. No thanks, I don't want your law either. Maybe a cracker wouldn't alter anything on my computer but I would certainly feel violated if someone sifted through my personal journal or my mushy emails to and from my girlfriend.
you don't arrest people for looking in through the window of a jewelry store or even rattling the cage over the windows.
No, but I bet you'd be screaming at 911 to get the police to your house if your pervert neighbor was peeping through your window at your wife getting out of the shower.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
hacking.... doesn't have to be illegal... of these definitions only one (v. tr. 3b) is illegal....
I guess judging by the wording of the treaty I can't mail my ax down south to you yankees..... stress relief appears banned too....
don't u just love that wording?
hack1 (hk)
v. hacked, hacking, hacks
v. tr.
1.To cut or chop with repeated and irregular blows: hacked down the saplings.
2.To break up the surface of (soil).
3.
a.Informal. To alter (a computer program): hacked her text editor to read HTML.
b.To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization: hacked
the firm's personnel database.
4.Slang. To cut or mutilate as if by hacking: hacked millions off the budget.
5.Slang. To cope with successfully; manage: couldn't hack a second job.
v. intr.
1.To chop or cut something by hacking.
2.Informal.
a.To write or refine computer programs skillfully.
b.To use one's skill in computer programming to gain illegal or unauthorized access to a file
or network: hacked into the company's intranet.
3.To cough roughly or harshly.
n.
1.A rough, irregular cut made by hacking.
2.A tool, such as a hoe, used for hacking.
3.A blow made by hacking.
4.A rough, dry cough.
[ Middle English hakken, from Old English -haccian; see keg- in Indo-European Roots V., intr.,
sense 2, back-formation from hacker1.]
hackable adj.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
Copyright © 1996, 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
factoring primes? Who are you, Bill Gates? Only some one of his power can break the laws of mathematics.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I think it's interesting that (according to Carrol Quigley) the two times that the armorments that the government could obtain where the same as those that the people could obtain there where huge expansions in democracy. These two times being the times of Pericles in Athens and The late 1700s.
Did anyone see the Bill Joy interview on Digital West where he said one of the primary challenges of the future will be making sure that powerful technologies are kept in the hands of responsible authorities, and out of the hands of terrorists and unabomber types?
I feel that this will be a major theme of now and more so in the future, the control of technology. I'm not just talking about weapons or tools used in criminal activity. What happens when we obtain the technology to make ourselves live forever? Will it be controlled, will it be HIDDEN? Will it be "narrated" out, "for our own good"? (Only fools would believe they could live forever using X! X causes some horrible bad thing! X is destroying the rain forest!)
Those In Power(tm) here in USA, inc. seem to have a disturbing trend going. More and more, it seems as though the government in this country is moving towards a "make everything illegal and then just pick and choose who you enforce the laws against" rather than "make clear, rational laws and enforce them".(This isn't just happening in the "computer law" arena)
Since when do we need "to pass legislation against illegally accessing a computer"? Isn't it already illegal to "illegally access" anything? Is this for some sort of "bonus crime" they can slap you with if they feel like it?
And I certainly hope the wording is a lot more specific than "intercepting computer data or interfering with computer systems" in this "treaty". If the government dislikes a "hacker" who happens to work as a system administrator, would they be able to fling him in jail because he read the server's logfiles? Or if a kid from som Scandinavian country wrote software to decode encrypted media, would someone in USA, inc. have to work very hard to get this hypothetical kid picked up by his country's police? (Say...why does this sound familiar?)
The 'party line' along this whole trend seems to always be "Don't worry, this law will only be used to deal with real criminals. Trust us, it won't be misused. You just don't understand the language, it's not as bad as you think." For example:
DOJ and council officials said much of the concern over the draft stems from a misunderstanding of the treaty's intent and a need for clarifications in the text. For example, they said, security testing would not be banned, because prosecutors must show there was intent to commit an illegal act. That last sentence makes me wonder - if the hypothetical "hacker" that the government doesn't like makes an offhand remark concerning cracking techniques he's interested in finding out more about, and later does a security scan of his employer's system (for legitimate reason), how hard would it be for US Gov't, inc, to convince a typical jury that a comment about 'cracking techniques' shows 'intent' (in the sense of 'conspiracy')? Given what I've heard about the frighteningly-popular-among-legislators "Methamphetamine anti-proliferation act" (which, from the sound of it, would make it illegal to TALK ABOUT the chemistry of phenylethylamine derivatives), this doesn't sound like a too-far-fetched scenario.
We (here in USA Inc) have about a month-and-a-half to get the word out and try to weasel a stand on the issue out of the various candidates running this year. May the God of your choice help us all....
Maybe I'm overreacting (and perhaps will be moderated down as "Troll" since there isn't a "Paranoid Whacko" option on the moderation menu), but I'm worried.
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
ahhh wtf i am so tired of this every time i turearound another goverment is trying to rape me from behind, the internet is the internet its made to be used for free exchange of ideas and free exchange of ideas allways comes with a few idiots who want to reek havic so deal with don't just pass another law limiting us, any one know island i can buy that has oc access casue i really want to move out of this domain of censorship to my right
As leading security practitioners, educators, vendors, and users of information security, we wish to register our misgivings about portions of the Council of Europe draft treaty on Crime in Cyberspace.
We are concerned that some portions of the proposed treaty may inadvertently result in criminalizing techniques and software commonly used to make computer systems resistant to attack. Signatory states passing legislation to implement the treaty may endanger the security of their computer systems, because computer users in those countries will not be able to adequately protect their computer systems and the education of information protection specialists will be hindered.
Critical to the protection of computer systems and infrastructure is the ability to
System administrators, researchers, consultants, and companies all routinely develop, use, and share software designed to exercise known and suspected vulnerabilities. Academic institutions use these tools to educate students and in research to develop improved defenses. Our combined experience suggests that it is impossible to reliably distinguish software used in computer crime from that used for these legitimate purposes. In fact, they are often identical.
Currently, the draft treaty as written may be misinterpreted regarding the use, distribution, and possession of software that could be used to violate the security of computer systems. We agree that damaging or breaking into computer systems is wrong and we unequivocally support laws against such inappropriate behavior. We affirm that a goal of the treaty and resulting legislation should be to permit the development and application of good security measures. However, legislation that criminalizes security software development, distribution, and use is counter to that goal, as it would adversely impact security practitioners, researchers, and educators.
Please do not hesitate to call on us for technical advice in your future deliberations.
I guess the treaty would, at the very least, make a significant part of the Bugtraq mailing list illegal.
Also note that I don't think they're only asking for an academic exclusion. If corporations want to do internal testing, they would need exceptions also. And individuals... and...
--
"A friendly reminder that ratified treaties supercede the constitution" All laws passed by our government must be constitutional and treaties are not exempt from this. The US Constitution is essentially the federal charter and without the Constitution there is no United States of America. So even treaties must be constitutional. Another thing to keep in mind is that without the US Constitution, our national leaders have no power. The states would retake all power lost by the federal government and the United States would collapse and we'd be where we were in 1781, a bunch of little sovereign states.
That is incorrect. It's a very common error, and comes from misparsing the sentence. The same misparsing could be used to say that federal law overrides the constitution, or that the constitution overrides itself.
What it REALLY says is that the (federal constitution, federal laws, and treaties) override state (constitutions and laws).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Power. I mean of course it is obvious, but there are subtle points.
Used to be, power was the person who had the gun or had bigger muscles. They made it illegal to use guns or muscles to have power over other people, unless you were an agent of the government.
These days, technology and knowledge of how to use it are power. Who isn't afraid of someone that can take your life and turn it upside down by erasing years of work, or worse, exploiting years of your work for their own profit. Guns and muscles aren't needed anymore, only technical knowledge.
The problem is that certain people in society have this power, and the government, who wants a monopoly on power over people, really hates that.
The government is the rightful holder of some of that power, but they of course abuse it. It is a war, they are trying to end the rouges with the new power with the scepter of traditional power.
The side effect is that they are taking power away from the people who are trying to use this technological power to prevent, rather than cause abuses.
What most of us here at Slashdot want to do is use this new power to help control the technology. We want to use our skills to prevent people from doing bad things with technological power. The government doesn't want to help us, they just want to maintain power the old fashioned way, with muscles and guns.
We must make the government accept that the only viable solution to this problem is technological innovation. Any other heavy handed solution will result in revolution. This is not something I desire, but I see it as inevitable, if the government doesn't turn around.
In other words, get off your damn ass and vote for someone who knows what is going on before it's too late. There is NO excuse for not voting.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The cold wor is indeed over. The west lost. The west is turning into a far worse dictatorship than the Soviets ever were.
Does this mean massive international man-hunts for the infamous "Carlos the Hacker"?
Best encrypt with ScramDisk (Windows 95/98 version here) locally, and with GnuPG for transmission, all your CueCat code and use anonymous remailers for version releases to Freenet, or be prepared to live out your life in a shadowy realm of underground coders dwelling in the hidden spaces between the giants of the United Corporations of the World.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
I don't believe it for a minute. The Constitution holds that treaty law should be held as equal to itself.
Close, but no seegar. The section you're referring to actually says that any of (the federal constitution, the federal laws, treaties) trumps any of (state constitutions, state laws) in any court case.
THAT section doesn't say anything about the relative strength of the federal constitution, the federal laws, and treaties.
However: laws, treaties, and constitutional amendments are authorized, and their manner prescribed, by the constitution. And the bar is much higher for amending the constitution than it is for either making a treaty or making a law. So it should be pretty clear that treaties, like laws, haven't qualified as constitutional amendments and thus neither treaties nor (federal) law trumps the (federal) constitution.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Read VI.2. again. ``This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States [...] and all Treaties made [...] shall be the supreme Law of the Land.''
It's an election year, the President, 1/3 of the Senate, and the entire House of Representatives are up for election. They're not in the least worried about citizens' reactions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. They don't feel there's any significant opposition, so why worry about this treaty? It's going to pass, and be as bad as predicted, and voices in the Slashdot wilderness will wail, to no effect.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
The text of the draft Convention can be found on here. They do welcome comments, By releasing the latest draft of the treaty, the Council of Europe seeks to enhance the consultation process with interested parties, whether public or private. It particularly encourages business and civil society organisations to come forward and share their comments with the experts involved in the negotiations before the text eventually becomes final. Commentaries are welcome on : daj@coe.int So, instead of bitching here, Slashdot should create a communal comment, indicating the worries that we, as a community have. Thalia
Because it outlaws pretty much every OS Microsoft have ever produced and, for that matter, Novell prior to (if memory serves) 4.11.
They're perfect cracking tools. You just have to persuade your target to install them, and the poor fools are wiiiiiide open.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
.. or has it? I guess they're not a sovereign nation, are they ... which I suppose makes it perfectly acceptable for the US government to make a treaty with it, without the will of the people, to control the US economy.
(Hint: The Federal Reserve Bank is a privately held organization...)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
THAT section doesn't say anything about the relative strength of the federal constitution, the federal laws, and treaties.
Actually, read it again. The way I look at it, it seems as though it provides a clear hierarchy. State constitutions trump state laws. Federal law trumps state laws. Treaties trump federal law. And finally, the Constitution trumps everything else, at least as far as the US is concerned.
Of course, technically the government is forbidden to ratify any treaty that would conflict with the Constitution, but go figure; that provision has been ignored for how many years?
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The text of the treaty does not use the term "hacking". That occurs twice in the editor's comments, and nowhere else.
The treaty explicitly defines the classes of crimes in question.
There's some bad stuff in there. But it's not QUITE as bad as the article makes it sound.
(One example is the section on seizure, which includes deliberatly denying access to the siezed data.
In the US, seizure as part of a search is supposed to be only to preserve evidence. Denial or disruption of access to the seized material is only authorized when it's an unavoidable consequence of preserving the evidence, and copies of the data siezed must usually be made available to the data's owner at some point in the proceedings.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...my brain. It's the most useful device I have when I want to hack.
That brings up an interesting question, as with all things, I would bet that SATAN, SAINT and SARA would all be classified as hacking tools when not used by some corporation or government. It's also a good question of who decides the use of these 'laws'. I'm an American in the classic sense, I don't believe that any organization outside of the US should control privacy issues or legal issues for citizens of the United States. I believe every country should have this right, but in truth, our country and the EU, via the overwhelming force of corporations that push them into this, will sign these laws. It's a sad state of affairs when we sign over our freedoms (or allow some person in Washington or elsewhere), to do the same. What constitutes illegal? That's up to the people, not the corporations or the governments. For me myself, if a law violates the interests of personal freedom (barring laws that protect people from harm, not corporations, I don't believe in corporate rights.), it should be broken. As a Native American, I know that we had laws on the books calling for our extinction, both physical and social. Was this right? If you were good to the tribes, you were doing something illegal. Should we follow all the laws these people make for us like Stepford Hackers? I say no, I say that those in the community who advocate any law that bans free source of any tool should check themselves. Any loss of any freedom is a loss that will never be regained. If anything, we should be signing more treaties to protect the earth, not the back sides of the corporations and governments that are slowly trying to control the lives of people all around the world. When they control everything, where will you go, where will you run? Hacking Tools are code, code is word, and word is free speech. Take it from a Native, they are ultimately out to screw you, not protect you. Trust us on this one.
Nah, you don't do that sort of thing all at once.
You start small, like being required to 'register' the equipment. Hmmmm....looks like my birth certificate already takes care of that part.
The next step then, is to ban "assault" versions of the equipment. In this context, I suppose this means either equipment over a certain length, or equipment that produces or can handle "assault" concentrations of testosterone....
Once that's in place, we just institute a "buy-back" program which allows owners of the equipment to sell it to the Government (presumably this means taxes go up to pay for nationwide 'sexual reassignment' surgery....) Those who hold out on this will have their equipment taken by force later on.
Okay, I'll stop. I'm starting to scare myself, and I don't want my legislators to think I'm serious and start getting ideas...
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Secondly, everyone here KNOWS that people who use their hacking skills to view or alter private data, or to deny service to a system, are doing something illegal, something that is wrong and something that should be stopped. The only people here that would disagree with me are young boys whose hormones haven't quite worked themselves out. I say to you, get a life.
Having said that, how else are we supposed to protect our systems and our data without INTERNATIONAL laws such as these?
Sure this all seems a little Orwellian. And sure, this all seems as if it's another excuse for the big powerful look-at-me-I-have-nuclear-weapons gang to take control of the net like they have every other medium of communication, but can someone else suggest a better way to govern this type of thing?
I'm not saying there is not a better way. I'm simply asking you to put better ways forward. In the event of two or more powerful countries getting together and making decisions, don't have a hissy fit about it and run off to check if your phones are tapped. The idea of posting comments is to stimulate productive discussion.
And NO I don't work for the government.
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
Daniel Zeaiter
daniel@academytiles.com.au
http://www.academytiles.com.au
ICQ: 16889511
Oversight is!!!
Any network sniffing tool is going to be very configurable. A few changes to the filter config and you go from watching only specific communication to watching all communication.
The oversight of the organizations acting on their net-tap warrants is what is important.
PS I have posted the same comment each time carnivor comes up, but I really think the source is irrelevant.
However, I'm not not so sure that that means what I thought it meant, either way, due to the "notwithstanding." That word means "in spite of." Essentially, the constitution can be repealed via treaty if that's what it means, which scares me and pisses me off. People like Clinton study COnstitutional Law just to find loopholes in it and ways around it. Treaty would be the mother of all loopholes.
The idea that nothing supercedes the U.S. Constitution is familiar; here's a couple of links I just dug up:
http://citizens.reagan.com/rig ht/ no-irs/helms.htm
http://www.aei.org/past_event/conf12 09b
Can you provide an explanation of how treaties can supercede the U.S. Constitition as the supreme law of the land? Could the fifth amendment, for example, be nullified by treaty? Wouldn't that constitute a change to the consitution which the states would have to ratify?
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Uh, buddy... I hate to detract from your argument, but the method of factoring primes has been well-known since antiquity. Namely, for any prime p, its sole factors are 1 and p. It's really not all that difficult.
Regards,
Perhaps if UUNet and other companies owning large sections of backbone just went black for like, a year then :
A) All the AOL subscirbers would forget to resubscribe and the internet would be cool again
B) they wouldn't bother to make laws to regulate somthing that didn't actualy exist anymore
C) I might get moderated above 1 for a change
William D. Freeman http://members.xoom.com/EvilGNU -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s+:++ a---
you kill all the lawyers
William D. Freeman http://members.xoom.com/EvilGNU -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s+:++ a---
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun,
Farmer v. Brennan
This statement by a United States Supreme Court judge was made before prisons had become a primary breeding ground for AIDS, not to mention Hepatitis-C (which is at 40% of inmates in California prisons).
There is a false myth being promulgated by a woman named Carolyn Meinel, "the Happy Hacker" that young hackers are not subject to sexual exploitation in Federal prisons. Carolyn Meinel has been published as lead author for such establishment magazines as "Scientific American" concerning computer security, makes frequent use of the FBI's services and is rumored to have been in the pay of the FBI on more than one occasion.
The truth is, rape of young men in Federal prisons is not as frequent as it is in some of the worst state prisons, but is more directly targeted by US Government authorities themselves.
Assistant U.S. attorney Gordon Zubrod from Harrisburg, PA made the following public statement to 3 suspects who fled to Canada (this statement was captured for the public record during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview):
"You're going to be the boyfriend of a very bad man if you wait out your extradition."
Here are a couple of letters written by young men to the late Steven Donaldson, the dead founder of Stop Prisoner Rape:
I was raped by an inmate that was assisted by an federal correctional officer [at FCI Memphis, Tennessee]. I have attempted to file a law suit in the matter, but with no money and without the legal knowledge to pursue a legal confrontation, I was simply forced to accept what happened to me as if it was the normal thing to do/or happen.
The incident was also investigated by the Office of Internal Affairs. The officer was then fired and I was simply transfered.
It is hard for alot of rape victims to seek help from the prison law assistance without the other inmates becoming aware of the fact that a male has been raped. Once this information has been set out there, the rape victims become victims of another type. This could be the reason that many cases such as min[e] never even reaches a court of law, simply becasue we can not initiate this kind of legal process without the help of other inmates. There are some inmates that have been raped in prison that cant even read. Not to mention the mere shame that comes with having your manhood stripped away as concieved by other male prisoners, so it becomes something that is hidden in your past if you are transfered to an institution where it is not known.-Valgene Royal, San Pedro, California
From Royal's BP-10 administrative appeal: "On July 3, 1991 I was laying in my bed sleeping in disciplinary segregation, when I was awakened by my door being unlocked, at which time an inmate entered my room and appeared at my bedside. The officer that let the inmate into the room left and locked the door before I could identify him. The inmate forced himself on me and proceeded to rape me....Eventually an officer whom I was able to identify...let the inmate out of the room and locked the door back and they left together.
[Royal reported the rape and was moved to the prison hospital.] I remained in the hospital cell from July 3th until July 9th, 1991 without being allowed to shower or exercise....On a few occasions I was only fed once a day....A F.B.I. polygraph examiner verified my claim `via' polygraph examine." [Royal was kept in segregation involuntarily even after his disciplinary time expired and both the attacker and the officer involved had been transferred from the institution.]
And another:
In 1986, at the age of 20...I pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud....On March 14, 1987, while sun-tanning on a hill away from [the federal prison camp at Lompoc, Calif.], [Tony] Armstrong and his two friends approached me. I was tackled and punched in my gut. I couldn't scream for help because I had the wind knocked out of me. I struggled and twisted, trying to get free, then I was hit and almost became unconscious. They raped me. After they were through, they said that, if I complained to the authorities, I would be killed. No matter where I went, they, or their gang members, would be able to kill me. Later, at dinner, Armstrong and his friends came over to my table and warned that they wanted to rape me again that night. I believed them because we lived in dorms and could move freely. The rape resulted in a large triangular piece of skin being torn off near the base of my tail bone. I still have a scar.
At 5:30 a.m., on March 15, 1987, I escaped by walking away from Camp. There were no fences around the camp.
Three months after I was raped [having been rearrested May 4 or 5 and incarcerated at VCI Terminal Island] I tested positive for HIV in a routine medical check up. This test was the first test among other routine ones in which I tested positive.
While at FCI Terminal Island, I wrote to...the Bureau of Prisons...My letter contained complaints about the amount of protection given to inmates from other inmates....[2 ½ weeks later] prison authroities asked if I had written the letter. I said that I did. The guard, Lieutenant Webb, at that point (and other times) mocked me and said that I should stop complaining and that I "should take it like a man." Other prison guards also made derogatory remarks. I was immediately placed in solitary confinement for over 100 days (January to April) "for my own protection."-Kevin Borkowski, California
Obscene are the arguments about whether any of the things the government does: treaties, taxes, etc., are "constitutional". Clearly it is well beyond the stage where the US Government gives your rat's ass to one of their civil sodomites whether or not anything they do is "constitutional" in the slightest. The only thing they care about is whether they can get away with what they want to do -- and, since their authority is based on criminal conduct at its very root, this has much more to do with who has the power than who has the law on their side.
The message the US Government is sending via its well-targetd prisoner rapes in Federal "corrections" institutions is clear:
Acquire power now.
Acquire power before they come and batter your door down and take you off to be gang raped by their alpha disease vectors "just to show you who's boss". You should be prepared to defend yourself from these murderous sexual sadists posing as "law" enforcement officers by whatever means necessary.
Since the US Government has taken to pitting ethnic groups against each other in prisons as a means of enhancing the degree of torment and control of prisoners, the primary means of defense, if you are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish or Italian, is to make sure you have friends who are connected with gangs of your ethnicity so that when you enter prison you can be protected from the other ethnic gangs. Be sure you have access to lots of money in the bank to provide insurance payments to your ethnicity's gang.
Unfortunately, most young "hackers" are Protestant heritage men who, as a result of that ethnicity, have an even bigger problem in prison:
With the encouragement of the prison system, young Protestant men (especially ones with light-hair color) are considered "prime chicken meat" by other ethnic gangs and the only gangs you can seek out for protection are those targeted by legislation as "terrorist hate groups" and receive correspondingly intense scrutiny, infiltration and even covert control by Federal authorities. Get anywhere near one of those groups and you are almost certainly going to run directly into an FBI operative as one of your first contacts within the group. Some of these under cover FBI operatives pad their reports out to make it look like they are doing some "good" for their civil sodomite paycheck. Furthermore, those Protestant ethnicity gangs are singled out in the prison system for suppression of their activities. In many prisons you can't even get a copy of the Poetic Eddas (a pre-Christian book of religious mythology from tribes that later became Protestant) because it is deemed "hate literature" by the government. Political asylum in other countries is a possibility, but once you have been labeled a "neoNazi" or "white supremacist" by any western country, you effectively lose your rights to political asylum anywhere in the West -- unlike those who are declared by the US Government to be members of gangs of ethnicities other than Protestant heritage.
PS: Setting up alternative monetary systems like DBarter can't hurt either. If they want to back their money with protection from the very threats they create, then it is high time to dispense with their monetary system.
Seastead this.
of huamn events it becomes necissary to say "FUCK YOU" to the new world order, but the need to kill people is not great enough, nor would it have enough support should we try global revolution, the people are entitled to tell the opressors what they think.
we hold these truths to be self evident, that all nerds are created equal, that they are endowed by Ken Thompson with certain inaliable rights, among these are Bandwidth, Source Code, and the persuite of Information. To secure these rights open standard are instidutd among Men, deriving their just powers from the concent of the hackers, That wheen ever any form of New World Order becomes destructive and/or fucking stupuid beyond belife, it is the right of the people to alter, abolish, or just fucking ignore it, and to institute a new Standard, laying its foundation on such on such principals and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likley to effect their Freedom To Use Cool Stuff and Ability To Stand Up For The Deffinition Of "Hacker".
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signatures
How's this?
William D. Freeman http://members.xoom.com/EvilGNU -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s+:++ a---
I agree. I once had a college roommate who claimed that the Soviet Union had infiltrated the United States to such an extent that we are the actual Russians.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Hurry!
Somebody please write some javascript that hacks. Then all browsers will be banned.
Some CGI that hacks. Cool, ban all web server sofware.
A Word Macro that hacks. I know some people that would like to see Word banned.
Come Flash that hacks. Flash will then be banned.
Lingo? That too's got to go.
Write another in C, C++, Java, Perl, and Assembly and maybe you can get all programming languages banned too.
Yippy!!!
The treaty will force all signatories (i.e. your government) to make illegal the 'import and distribution of devices used for hacking.'
:(
Well, there goes my compiler
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
As anybody who's had to hack a box at work can attest, the most important things you can use is the trusty telnet client, perhaps Perl to run through a million passwords in a brute force attack and the good old brain.
So, do we outlaw ICQ, IRC, ICMP, source-routed packet data, backticks in the *nix shells, poor CGI programs that don't escape their parameters well enough, the Bugtraq mailing list, the sprintf function and just about anything else because it's a tool that could be used for hacking? Remember that Kevin Mitnik (sp?) used social engineering and trash digging more often than any hacking tool...
It's time for the public to take a stand and stop listening to the overreacting, sensationalizing, hype-strewn media blowing things out of proportion and react with common sense for a change. If we'd just spend some time telling the government what rational people want for a change, we'd be much better off.
So, if you feel like writing to your representitives, put pen to paper and fire off a letter; almost without exception, the people dictating our "can's" and "cannot's" on-line don't even understand simple e-mail, let alone the complex ways in which a tool can be used for good or bad.
/tma
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The US and UK (and probably other countries) already have laws banning trade in devices used for hacking and other criminal purposes. AIUI in the US the usual test is lack of "substantial lawful purpose" or something along those lines. The treaty doesn't set down detailed rules for this, it just commits the countries in question to have some law on the books which covers that subject.
Similarly for the provision of information. The treaty doesn't set out criteria for warrants: that is a domestic matter. It merely requires the signatory countries to have some kind of law on the books which enables the police to get at computer data.
Recall the problem with the virus author in the Phillipines who couldn't be prosecuted because the Phillipines didn't happen to have an anti-virus law on the books? This treaty is intended to avoid that kind of situation.
Paul.
(BTW "Mainwaring" is pronounced "Mannering", as every Dad's Army fan will know)
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
of the future coming up to meet where Neal Stephenson ("Cryptonomicon"), Iain Banks ("The Business") and others have trod before.
...
But that was only fiction
If the government of your country doesn't represent you, do you change the government or do you make your own country?
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
How does this gel with the EU Data Protection Law... "Personal data shall not be passed to any state with inadequate Data Protection Legislation" [i.e. US]?
Under one law the FBI demand my details, under the other my ISP refuses to hand them over to any American organisation.
Let's hope that the implementation of this treaty follows the great success stories of previous prohibitions by international agreements, such as bans on child labour, land mines, arms sales, mary jane etc. etc. etc.
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
The constitution doesn't say so, and neither does the most applicable case law. The Supremacy Clause reads as follows:
Thus, a treaty is no more immune from Constitutional scrutiny than is any other "law[] of the United States which shall be made." While treaties (and federal law) are CLEARLY given special treatment as supreme law over that of states, the Constitution has special overriding status, and the Supreme Court has stated so clearly in several cases. See, e.g., Missouri v. Holland, 252 US 416 (1920) ("a treaty cannot be valid if it infringes the Constitution").
Come on over and sign people
http://www.censorthis.net/cybercrime.html .
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Like for instance Communications test sets, Oscilloscopes , Debuggers, Protocol analysers, Logic Analyzers, and Engineering Books