Cybercrime Treaty to Be Signed

texchanchan writes: "Yahoo reports that "Interior ministers and law enforcement officials from Europe, South Africa, Canada, the United States and Japan will sign the milestone cyber-crime convention.... [because] computer criminals... have moved on from ``innocent'' hacking to fraud, embezzlement and life-threatening felonies."" Feel the spin in that article, from the anonymous "official". We've posted about this treaty before; read the final draft and note it well, particularly the extradition provisions, mutual assistance (some other country gets your country to tap your phones, and send them the data) and the requirements to disclose passwords.

Comments

Autoimmune Disease

[sickman]

Here's another one.
Honestly, are we more afraid of terrorists, or
our own governments?
George II says that Terrorists hate freedom, and want to take my freedom away. That isn't true.
Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.

Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought fraud, embezzlement, and life-threatening felonies were already against the law on these countries!

Lessig's message never more timely

[pdqlamb]

Lawrence Lessig came out the other week saying the geeks who helped create the internet, and enjoy the freedom it was designed to permit, are not helping to defend that freedom. Those who want to limit or eliminate that freedom, from big business who wants to sell you something, to those who want to use it to watch your every move, are winning the political battle by default.

This is the time to prove Lessig wrong. I don't know how to get a congresscritter's attention any more. They only used to pay attention to postal mail, which they are afraid to open now. But between telephone, fax, e-mail, and watching out for him when he comes into town, I intend to let my congresscritters know not just how much I despise this crock, but why.

It's time for a call to arms. Slashdotters can take down almost any web site, because there's lots of us and we're not too lazy to click on a few buttons. But if we want to avoid the tremendous pitfall this treaty will engender, it's time to slashdot Congress. I doubt there will be 10,000 phone calls, pieces of mail, etc., the entire Congress will get because of newspaper, radio, or TV coverage. If we're not too lazy, we can generate a normal ./ volume in faxes, phone calls, and so forth, we can make ourselves heard.

The alternative is to whimper, roll over, and cringe.

Re:Violation of liberites? I think so

[camusflage]

Don't take a law that's designed to stop malicious people and extrapolate it into something that's going to take ones and zeros and make them illegal.

I'm sure this statement would've been much comfort to Dmitry Skylarov as he spent weeks in jail. Obviously he's one of those malicious people that laws are supposed to go after. Just because a law isn't intended to do one thing doesn't it mean it won't be used anyway.

Simply talking about hacking or trying to figure out how things work isn't going to land you in prison.

Sure thing. I'm sure that Steve Jackson will back this one all the way.