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!

Dear Slashdot

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

Attention! Now that this treaty has been signed into law, keep in mind that it is very important that you never forget your passwords. If you forget your password, and it is required for a terrorist investigation, you can be arrested for failure to disclose your password. Please be extremely careful with all your passwords, never EVER forget them.

Specfically:
- If you have Alzheimers, do not use any computer system that requires a password.
- If you write software, make sure that any time you ask a user to create a password, you inform them that they could be imprisoned for life in a foreign country if they forget it.
- If you have to remember multiple passwords, repeat them to yourself 100 times every night, before you go to sleep.

Please follow these tips to keep everyone safe & free from terrorism!

It is important to note . . .

[taustin]

. . . that under the provisions of the United States Constitution, "Interior ministers and law enforcement officials" can sign whatever the hell they want, but only the US Senate can actually approve a treaty with another nation. And until they do, it's not law.

Also note that treaties cannot alter the Constitution itself, nor can they implement anything that violates it.

Re:It is important to note . . .

[praedor]

This doesn't negate the original statement. Only Congress can OK a treaty. Until they do, signing the paper means nothing (see the treaty on Global Warming, signed but essentially dead in the US because it hasn't gotten past Congress).

Without amending/revoking Constitutional Amendments, the treaty STILL cannot override the Bill of Rights, period. The ONLY way to beat something in the Bill of Rights and all Amendments attached to it is via another Amendment.

Re:Don't worry...

[Rick the Red]

once Bush hears that this is an "international treaty", he'll back out of it because of US interests.

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.

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.

Pilots can easilly turn them back on

[FreeUser]

Someone switches off the landing lights via the computer systems.

As a pilot who has experienced this sort of thing (through other causes) I can say with certainty that any competent pilot can either switch the runway lights back on or go missed (or both if their not comfortable with the situation). Most airports, even the large ones, have pilot controlled lighting (key the mike n times on the CTAF/Tower Frequency). If the pilot is already in the flair then s/he can already see the runway with the plane's landing/taxi lights, and unless visibility is really, really bad (in which case they can go missed) they can land at that point without the runway lights being on at all.

If there really aren't options (like a blackout due to thunderstorm, terrorist bomb, or luser system cracker), then the pilot can do a missed approach and enter a holding pattern (if on instruments) until the situation is resolved or s/he is diverted to another airport, or if flying VFR simply go around and either try the approach again or find an alternate airport. Even in the worst case scenerio turning off the runway lights, even on short final, is hardly life threatening. Hell, its happened to me simply because the lights had been turned on 15 minutes earlier by another landing pilot and the timer shut the lights off with the threshold about fifty feet away from my descending aircraft. Seven quick clicks on the mike and I completed the landing without even a raise in pulse. This sort of thing happens all the time in non-computerized systems, and I will repeat again, it is not life threatening. Adding a computer to the situation doesn't change that, in the least.