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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.
Oh, he'll sign it, but that doesn't matter, because the 50 states can safely ignore it. Really, they can, because Federal treaties are not binding on the states! This is according to George W. Bush himself: "Texas did not sign the Vienna Convention, so why should we be subject to it?" Statement from the office of Texas Governor George W. Bush
So please write your state Attorney General and ask that they please ignore this treaty.
Also, and more importantly, write your Senators and ask that they not ratify it in the first place.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Banning ANY speech is an infringement of Free Speech. Making one responsible for the consequences of one's speech is not.
I don't get how people can look at words like "free" or "any" or "no law" and somehow see "limited" and "some" and "a few laws".
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Perhaps it is time for the geeks of the world to declare the internt a soverign country, with and end user licenses agrement that says something like the folowing:
/. could declare soverinty along with other places that would work better too. I suppose my long rant ends with a summary. I don't reacall the citizens of the internet having a say, that is bad.
ATTENTION by connecting your computer to the internet you agree that
1) Everyone has the right to say whatever they $^&# 'ign want and you can choose to listen or not.
2) you realize that the internet might be insecure, like walking down a street, Provide secruity for yourself.
3) We wil not take down a page you find offencive, someone wanted to say that.
4) We don't care about treaties you all signed, they are not ours.
5)By conneting your machine to our network you agree that you have read this agreement, even if you are a government this applies to you.
6) I said that we don't care if you are #$%'ing offended you controll where you browse.
7)Don't look to us to solve your internal network problems, it is YOUR fault they were not secure.
To governments:
we know your country has laws, so do we, we don't care what someone in another country did, it was not in your country. If you are so afraid of content perhaps you are closed minded or if you dislike content perhaps your citizens shouldn't be here.
Perhaps someone a little bit better should draft the deleration of indpendence for the net, But Hey the whole internet dosen't need to be indepented, Perhaps
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"-Unknowen
So I read it. the whole thing. Looks like it will:
A-Keep a zillion or so int. lawyers off food stamps for the foreseeable future.
B-Reassure the int. fat cats that the "problem has been adequately addressed"
C-Set a new world record for obscufatory( I think that means unclear, sometimes contradictory and in view of the mass of existing law on the issue somewhat pointless) rhetoric.
D-Scare the pants off every cracker in the known world.( Man! I could hear all those plugs coming out of wall sockets all the way over here!)
E-Prove to the world that these guys(and gals and any others of the 8 or 9 known sexes involved) know what they are talking about and have banded together to do something about it!
As i sometimes do, I went to one of my old fart buddies and got his opinion (I'm 52 so these guys are really ancient). I explained it rather well I thought and when he stopped laughing he had this to say.
"Well it sorta reminds me of the Volstead act. (Booze prohibition in the 20's) We'd come out of those logging camps with a hell of a thirst and there was nary a drop to be had. We bought our booze from the local sherrif because he would'nt throw us in the pokie if we bought it from him. I don't remember that it changed much of anything at all except who got our wages. But you know that pretty much convinced us all that when it comes right down to it each man has pretty much got to make his own rules. You know what I mean?"
Yeah, guess I do. Well thaks for taking the time to read this. Jim Sofra, Queen Charlotte Island,"The trailing edge of technology"