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Implications Of The International Cybercrime Treaty
Saber Taylor writes: "Lots of good .signature material in this analysis: 'The treaty imposes criminal liability on businesses if they fail to supervise users who
commit potentially illegal acts.', 'If you cable together two computers, you could be forced to comply with investigations that originated in Sofia or Riga.', etc." Maybe this is what's meant by "entangling alliances." Worth reading, wherever you fall on the paranoia scale.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Of course if you don't drive, that's not a problem.
Don't drive in Europe? Still have to register.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Don't worry! I'll turn your hack of their sophisticated technology into a Perl script, or maybe a big prime number, and broadcast it around the net! The djinni is out of the bottle on this one!
The enemies of Democracy are
Good thing these defenders of peace and freedom require cookies before you can use their site. Otherwise, some hippie with cookies turned off might get to read the secret documents!
The problem, once again, is that the sheople don't understand what is being legislated, so they by and large don't care what the law says or does. People in the USA, at least, have a horrible "if it doesn't effect me I don't care" attitude when it comes to laws effecting privacy and personal liabilities.
Hopefully AT&T, AOL, and the other big players who would be negatively effected will be able to effectively lobby against this. However, don't count on it. The supporters have just as much cash, and the people aren't going to voice their oppinion one way or another.
An interesting aside - what will we do when McCain/Feingold makes it illegal for AT&T to lobby to stop this kind of abuse?! Are we going to suddenly develop a civilly active, well educated populace that researches pending legislation and calls the appropriate representatives? Somehow I doubt it. I bet we get lots of this crap shoved down our throats once we make it illegal for interested parties to lobby.
Living in a free country was nice. I wonder where I can move to so that I might experience it again?
Now the Borneans will be able to prosecute me for trying to take over thier country from my Network.
You say you want a revolution....
Yet another useful method of seperating the US Taxpayer with his hard-earned money... We are going to end up footing most of the expense behind this one... (as always) 8^(
Jethro
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Unenforceable laws are the most dangerous kind, because they invite selective enforcement.
Say, you're in the US and piss off somebody in the US. You also use PGP. So, the evil powers make a phone call to, say, French (where encryption is illegal) to cook up a warrant for your "alleged" use of it on the French territory (Oops, Your Honor, it just got routed that way!). The next thing you know, feds are not only rummaging through your dirty laundry, they're also threatening to extradite you to France.
Just like with HRS, when it comes to computer crimes, you are guilty until proven innocent. If it is believed by law enforcement that your computer is being used for any kind of illegal purpose, they come and take it all. To make matters worse, there is no magic line in the sand which says where what they can take stops. If you think I am paranoid, consider what is happening with MS and licenses. Companies are assumed guilty and must prove their innocence.Think of the students who were gaming in New York (and to think we once did squirt gun battles on campus). The equipment and stuff is taken until they have convinced themselves there is nothing hiding on it somewhere.In some sense it is like a cop stopping you because you are speeding, a dog sniffs out your wallet which is full of money and because the money smells like drugs you loose it. It does not matter that you just came from a flea market where all the transactions were in cash and you were selling used computer equipment, you are out the money. It occurs more regularly than you think, but it is ok because so far it has not happened to you. The US is not what it used to be because of the freedoms we have allowed to be taken away in the name of safety.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
We rarely apply patches here because
a) NT has a history of breaking under large SP's
b) we have to REBOOT everytime there is a patch.
http://www.lccc.edu
Here's one bit that both terrifies me and makes me mad:Also, the report cites supporters, MPAA and RIAA because they're trying to use INTERNATIONAL LAW to force the US to make copying their material a criminal, not civil offense. Cool shit.
Be afraid.
And just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me...
Whoa, the US Government creates a program and funds it with U.S. taxes paid for by U.S. Taxpayers! What did you think they were going to do, magically create more money and spend that instead? 99% of the United States government is paid for by U.S. citizens. The Taxpayer has already been separated from his dollar-- it's just up to the government to decide *how* to waste it.
-Ted
Hey, that makes me think, let's have a meatspace napster. It'll be a huge party in the town square where we all go and see if anyone is singing the songs we like :)
Reading the Fine Print on the Cybercrime Treaty
This is aweful. It treats all net users as if were a bunch of thugs who are out to get pr0n, pictures of little girlies, and while we're at it, run DOS attacks on servers just for fun.
Maybe they should concentrate more on forcing companies who provide servers and services to make sure things are secure. How about forcing MS to put out security patches for NT/2000/IIS as soon as they find out there is a problem. Then making sure that these patches are readily available. How about making sure companies like verisign don't hand out certificates to anyone claiming to be MS.
I mean, really, we don't live in singapore. We don't need to be flogged everytime something bad happens. It should be the governments role to make sure companies make secure products, not to turn the internet into a police state.
I think you misunderstand the danger. This could potentially have the effect of (companies with net access, ISPs, portals) in the US being held partly liable for actions of their users that are considered crimes outside the US.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
With all the pure BULLSHIT that has infected our lives, I really wish there were a "reboot" button on society. This is what the Founding Fathers were able to do. They drafted a brilliant foundation for a successful country, but they didn't put any stop measure in to keep it from becoming infinitely beauracratic and corrupt.
Thanks, we did our best. We added checks and balances to avoid direct abuses of power. We reserved all rights to the states in areas not spelled out. We even provided a list of rights that apply to all men. Based on what I've seen in the last two hundred years, I think we would have added a few clauses devoted to personal privacy, taxation, and corporations. Still, even the stuff we spelled out clearly somehow got messed up, e.g.:
- Thanks for messing with free speech.
- While we were mostly concerned with political speech, your court cases show "artistic speech" is worthy of coverage. Good, we like this. Why did you make it a felony to talk about encryption circumvention? Why did you make it a felony to talk about having sex with minors? Why did you make it a felony to burn the flag? What part of freedom of the presses did you not understand?
- Right to bear arms?
- Damn, what's the point of the whole thing if you can't oppose what you feel is unlawful force. Where did we say "unless you are a convicted felon," or "unless you live in New York City?"
Don't get me started on warrented versus warrentless arrests. Um, police can come in and take your Babbage-machines as "evidence" without you being able to sue them? We thought we had this issue nailed down pretty clearly.These are meant to be simple, absolute, minimal rules. Why are you "reinterpreting" them?
Corporations "re-engineer" themselves all the time. Wipe the slate clean, terminate all policies (laws), everything.. Then assemble a team of top notch leaders and visionaries and recreate everything from scratch.
Don't go there, citizen! Almost every "re-engineering" attempt leads to more short-sighted rules, not less. What percentage of companies successfully "re-engineered" themselves? Our country's strength is that we did not re-engineer our country during World War II, the McCarthy era, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Napster war, or anything else.
I'll go back to my coffin now... thanks for your time.
The short-sightedness of elected officials (or humanity at large) is frightening sometimes.
The internet is the medium in question in this article; So what? This is about cultural and social issues, folks.
In the United States, there is a reason states are allowed to pass their own laws. Even within the SAME COUNTRY there are regionalized pockets of persons with differing opinions from the "national average." Nevermind the entire WORLD, with it's dozens (hundreds) of vastly different cultures.
The German government has a throbbing exposed nerve concerning neonazi or nazi era material or propaganda on the internet due their unique obvious historical perspective. Does this mean that a college student in Oregon should be denied the opportunity to study the rise of the Third Reich? If a [flaming idiot] white supremacist in Florida wishes to publish a neo-nazi website on a local ISP who agrees to host the material, doesn't the FIRST AMENDMENT of the UNITED STATES guarantee his or her RIGHT to publish this material? Are we missing something here?!
Had I been born in a different corner of the world, I'd probably (if I had net access) be composing this while sporting a stylish 2 foot long PENIS SHEATH with my buttcheeks flapping in the wind as I strode off. In my society this would be no more unusual than wearing DOCKERS. Does this mean my smiling picture on my homepage should set off your NET NANNY? Would it be PORNOGRAPHY in YOUR COUNTRY?
Once again, nearsighted politicians have ignored common sense. Even given the broad diversity of culture, within the Human Experience there is a framework for agreeing on what is generally 'right or wrong'. Someone r00t1ng your webserver and defacing it is most likely ALREADY illegal in the G-8 nations. This legislation would appear to open an entire CRATE of ethnic/religious/political/cultural worms that NOONE will be satisfied with.
Let the Germans shut down nazi/neo-nazi sites in their own country or prosecute persons owning this material in GERMANY.
Let the Americans prosecute persons posessing child pornography. If the content is legal in the country of origin, who are we to go storming after their ISP's?
For god's sake, someone dig up Ben Franklin and clone him; We need more humanists in the world.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Doesn't a treaty have to be executed within the authority of the United States? Which would imply it would have to be constitutional? Can anyone clear this up for me?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
- The internet is too big to effectively police
- Law enforcement officials are not clueful enough to track "cybercriminals"
- Jurisdiction is often a problem
His suggestion was for victims of cybercrime to take a more vigilante approach: 'hack unto others who hack unto you.'While this is of course fraught with all the problems of vigilanteism, until a treaty allowing the RIAA to kick down doors in Uzbekistan is approved, it seems to be the most practial approach for effectively "getting some justice done."
John
John
the consesnus here seems to be that this "law" runs from the ridiculous to the unconstitutional. Well, now that we are decided, what are we going to do about it?
The Global Government (which either doesn't care or is too dumb ot realize that all of their meetings for the past 18 months have been massivly disrupted) is set to have yet another meeting soon. This one is in Quebec City, and if you are too far away to make it, I suggest you demonstrate in your local town (if you are lucky enough where such actions aren't liable to get you stuck in a basement with electrodes stuck to your testicles)
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Most of the comments so far seem to be of the opinion that other countries (Germany and China seem to be favorite targets) will attempt to use this to enforce their laws against US citizens in the US. I think it's more likely that the US (or more specifically, US corporations) will use this to harass/arrest/attack people in other countries, especially considering that they've already done it. Or am I the only one who remembers the MPAA-sponsored arrest of a certain Norwegian programmer?
"Truth is like a tragedy" -Coal Chamber
The nation that does that could find its population in a very curious undertow. Suddenly it will find that not just is its own population seething against the local governing authority, but much of the rest of the world - the most educated, wealthy and computer-literate rest of the world at that - is really bothered by them, and doing what it can to help bring the offending government down.
Perhaps what it comes down to is the old notion of culture hacking: we've got to get busy and truly undermine and subvert all large entities which stand against human (not to be confused with corporate and government) freedom. The currently fashionable notion that it's okay for people to be Muslim fundamentalists in their 'own' land - or Christian fundamentalists in the swamps of the American South - or Marxists in China - because gee whiz we've got to respect other cultures and beliefs....
Well, if we respect cultures and beliefs in this way we're going to get stifled at home; conversely, if we don't get stifled at home we're going to spread notions of freedom to Iran and China and the American South that will seriously shake up business as usual. So this is what's in play: either we get real busy figuring out how to help those on the ground in Iran and China and Texas pull their governments down, or we're gonna find ourselves sat on.
We're not talking digital entertainment here, we're talking one of the bigger puzzles going: how do you create societies which promote radical freedom in the psychology of their citizens? Can this even be hacked? Well, don't imagine for a minute that decades of research at the CIA and elsewhere have shown no progress in methods to hack cultures to move the other way. They hacked the Iranians to want to stupidly follow authority, for instance, and look what they got! Okay, this gives them pause, the technology isn't perfect yet.
But freedom should be easier, right? Isn't it simpler to break things down than to build them up, assinine authoritarian systems included? Probably not, but it's the only game we've got, and losing sucks.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This is a really bad idea, because it gives everyone sovereignity over everyone else. The Absurdity of it is mind boggling, and it is ripe for abuse.
1984 never looked so good. We got to start writing snail mail now folks.
While the idea of a world government could be made to work in some way, This is NOT the way to achieve it. It is a stupid as a way to achieve it as is possible. This keeps up, and I'll start praying for an asteroid.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Sorry, but I think thats crap. The internet is not too big to effectively police, not by a long shot. Firstly, the "population" on the Internet smaller than the population of Earth by a factor of about 50, and I don't see the "real world" as being too big to "effectively police". Secondly, the Internet is far far far easier to monitor. As opposed to real life, where the logistics and costs still make it very difficult to do, on the Internet you can monitor anything and everything that goes on, and for relatively cheap. Just look how cheaply and easily the FBI has gained the power to monitor virtually any Internet traffic in the USA. The vast majority of Internet traffic goes through the equipment of a very small number of telecomms companies and ISPs. Most internet activities are either already logged, or are very easy to log. The problem with logging requiring way too much data to store has quickly become a non-issue thanks to cheap data storage (really, if dejanews can archive the entire usenet (apart from binaries), do you *really* think the FBI and other authorities can't? Get real. And it's only getting cheaper and easier to do it. The techically illiterate public might see the Internet as some huge, mysterious place, but technical people should know better.
The argument that law enforcement officials are not clueful enough to track "cybercriminal" probably has some truth in it, but it's incredibly shortsighted and naive to just brush off the authorities completely as being too ignorant to be useful. This is a double-edged sword. Firstly, there are many clued up law enforcement officials, and there will only be more and more in future. Secondly, law enforcement officials who are clueless, of which there are many of these too, are also incredibly dangerous to have policing the online world - do you want somebody who doesn't even know what "source code" is prosecuting you for some cybercrime that you did not commit?
Jurisdiction is "often" a problem? Well if you're falsely accused of something you did not do, or if you're being prosecuted but it's effectively a violation of your human rights, you better "just hope" that jurisdiction "just happens" to be a problem wherever you are. Sounds like a crapshoot to me. Why not just not have stupid laws and treaties to begin with?
Really, to just casually brush off dangerous treaty's and laws by making a few broad statements about the Internet (with no evidence, arguments or proof to back them up, as well as no attempts whatsoever to try to see what technology will be like in the next ten or twenty years) is incredibly dangerous, shortsighted and naive. The fact that these claims come from a law "professor" might fool some people into thinking the arguments carry a lot of weight, but hopefully not enough people to be duped. I know it isn't really the 'american way' for the sheeple, but try to think for yourselves rather than letting some appointed "expert" on TV do all the thinking for the majority of the population.
If the most oppressive member of the international Council of Europe may prosecute citizens of member countries, then the rights enjoyed by those citizens are non-existant when using the Internet. Now, instead of France suing eBay for selling Nazi memorabilia, they can extradite the American citizen posting it as well.
Very scary!
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
I don't even know where to start...
So let's all just let the most uptight, law-beridden nation in Europe dictate law enforcement in any of the other member countries. There are no checks on this that I can see; this is completely based on trusting the other nations to have sane laws. What if an islamic member nation makes it a crime, a legal crime, for women to not wear their veils etc, and then tried to enforce their weirdo ideas in *other countries*? That wouldn't be appropriate, and thank god it's not happening yet; so why is it appropriate to do the same sort of thing vis. computers and the internet? I'm sorry to inform you, but I am a United States Citizen, Mr. German Prosecutor, and under my freedoms of speech is included the freedom to spout Nazi hate if I so choose.
You know what, you can take your fucking terrorism warrant and shove it. U.S. Prosecutors already have enough on their plates dealing with the criminals we have HERE, breaking OUR laws. The last thing our courts need is a wave of "criminals" whose only f-ing crime is that they broke a law which they were never advised of, which is only a law in a country they've never heard of, under the terms of a treaty they were also never advised of!! Talk about being arrested out of the blue!
What's even worse is that the american public is not even being TOLD. At ALL. Now I understand that our nation has so many laws that only lawyers, those who have dedicated their lives to the law, can hope to understand the vast, bloated beast it has become. However, I don't believe in making laws and never explaining them to the populace before enforcing them. This isn't like a bill in congress, where the representatives who made it can be voted out afterwards, and the bill struck down by the Supreme Court. This is a binding treaty with another group of nations, and it will be much harder for the american people to get out of it.
This entire thing just sickens me. It really does.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
This is virtually unenforceable. I mean, is the Fed going to constantly monitor every machine attached to the Net? Nah. And what about networks in countries that don't recognize this? The Net is just too large and too mis-understood by gov'ts all over the world. They can pass this, but I really doubt it'll stick any more than any other 'International' laws governing the Net.
I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but it looks to me like this treaty will make systems like Echelon and Carnivore legal on a global scale.
$man microsoft
Crowded elevator smell different to midget. -Chinese Proverb
Just because a law is unenforceable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future. How can anyone know what technology will enable governments to do in ten years?
As another poster correctly pointed out, the DMCA is an implementation of a treaty. Treaties are the "Supreme Law of the Land" and whether that means "with" the Constitution or "secondary to" the Constitution is not entirely clear to me.
Treaties are inherently dangerous in that they provide a "workaround" for our government to pass legislation with the authority of the constitution without having to amend the constitution.
Collectively, all of these treaties being negotiated year after year scare the Shite out of me. People don't stop to consider how much weight they carry nor what effect they will have 50 years from now. "If it doen't work, than later we'll change it." does not work with treaties. They last forever.
My other sig is a Haiku
Corporations "re-engineer" themselves all the time. Wipe the slate clean, terminate all policies (laws), everything.. Then assemble a team of top notch leaders and visionaries and recreate everything from scratch.
If the private sector can do it, why not the public?
(sigh) if only there were another "new world" that we could colonize and invent a new government for. No, I will not move to Mars. That planet looks horribly and unbearably BORING.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Allow me to decode:
United States interests want another way to enforce copyrights abroad. This treaty is just another tool to exercise power outside of U.S. borders in order to keep the money flowing into the correct pockets. That stuff about Germans serving warrants on U.S. citizens talking to neo-Nazis is pure fantasy.
Just follow the money:
After the United States and other nations signed and ratified the WIPO treaty, Congress crafted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as implementing legislation. Congress did not seriously debate the most controversial aspects in part because of the perceived need to implement the treaty. One of those made it unlawful to tamper with anti-copying devices and software.
Oh look, it's the DMCA.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.