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Reading the Fine Print on the Cybercrime Treaty
Anonymous Coward writes: "Mike Godwin, Former Counsel to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of Cyber Rights writes about a new international treaty on cybercrime 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. The primary architect is the United States Department of Justice which is 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."
The treaty has supporters, of course. The Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry of America Association, and the Business Software Alliance all favor the treaty's requirement that certain copyright infringements be handled under criminal law.
What a surprise.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
However every ISP that I have ever dealt with has had an indemnity clause in their user agreement. Now, IANAL, but I get the impression that I have agreed that if my ISP spends money in staff and legal costs investigating a complaint about me from police in for example Riga or Washington then they can send me the bill and I will have to pay it.
Note: I am in the UK, but I assume that a similar system exists in other countries?
Flashbacks to "Animal Farm"...
Kasreyn turns to Benjamin the Goat...
"Benjamin, my eyes are failing. Can you read to me what the First Commandment says?"
The old donkey sighed, then squinted at the side of the old barn... Finally, he spoke.
"Every animal is allowed freedom of his thoughts and ideals, as long as they are not expressed in a way that would offend others."
Kasreyn sighed. "I could have sworn it used to say something about freedom of speech... didn't you? Well, I guess it doesn't really matter - Comrade Napoleon is always right."
Does this strike anyone else as VERY FUCKING SCARY? This is the fucking U.N. charter, and it doesn't include freedom of speech, but everyone just *assumes* it does.
It really does feel to me like the part from the middle of Animal Farm, where the pigs were surreptitiously rewriting the Commandments, with no one the wiser. Finally they were able to abuse the other animals terribly, all the while claiming it was merely their virtuous prerogative under the laws.
I think Orwell's little attempt at humor or consolation, in calling it a "Fairy Tale", was misguided, even in as bleak a pessimist as he.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Of course, the authorities do not have an answer to this. They may not want to have an answer to this.
The mental health authorities do not have any answer to this. Yet you would think they would have some effective answer to trustworthiness that would not have orwellian overtones. But their focus is not on human values like social virtues like being trustworthy. Their focus is very much elsewhere. Ultimately their focus is on control.
But I do not blame them for this, because that is not where the money is. For many many years the big bucks for research have gone into the high profit areas, such as advertising and drugs. Madison Avenue has paid billions of dollars to find out how to more effectively manipulate their market. The drug research has gone to helping people be outwardly calm and peaceful. NOTE: Calm and peaceful sounds nice, but I do not think that calm and peaceful is always an appropriate response to a situation. But being passive is often defined as the appropriate and healthiest response
This is troubling in the context of the emerging Global legal system. The rule used to be that you had to be in a country to break it's laws (such as a traffic accident). Now we have a problem of WHOSE laws and standards are going to be enforced world wide. The emerging answer is EVERYONES, and when in doubt, well you have the lunacy of France barring Yahoo for content on USA sites.
We'll have to have porno like disclaimers saying "warning this content may be illegal outside of the USA" with perl and java setup to block access from non-USA ip addresses.
The fragmentation of the Internet continues, and the legal system is a bloody mess.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Second, it requires nations to develop standard procedures to capture and retrieve online and other information. Nations would have to be able to issue "retention orders" that would "freeze" data on any
computer. Governments would also need the ability to capture in real time the time and origin of all traffic on a networks, including telephone networks. For serious crimes, they would be required to
intercept the actual content of the communications.
Third, nations would have to cooperate with other nations in sharing electronic evidence across borders. And this cooperation requirement would apply to all crimes. They don't have to be the cybercrimes
laid out in the first section of the treaty or even actions unlawful under U.S. law.
So, regardless of any country's 'right to privacy' this says you have none.
There's no mention of encryption that I can find, though. Does that mean that if everything I do is encrypted then it cannot be recovered? Or that there is no encryption available because it would cause the search and recovery impossible?
This sounds like a really REALLY bad idea.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Yes! And by doing so they can circumvent ALL your constitutional rights, including the ever important First, Fourth and Fifth ammendments, because treaties have the same precedence as the supreme law of the land (Article VI.) Getting a treaty ratified is a hell of a lot easier than ammending the Constitution and can be effectively done without voter approval! Nice loophole guys!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?