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Cybercrime Treaty Signed
lam0r writes: "I can't find a newslink for this, but CNN had on their news ticker that 37 nations, including the United States, had signed a treaty designed to make tracking and prosecuting 'hackers' easier and more efficient. What exactly is defined as 'hacker' is something I haven't been able to find out. ... Why was the public not made aware of this until it was done? Anyone know more about this item than me?" This is the Cybercrime Treaty, which was signed today by 30 nations and which we have posted about before. This analysis is probably the best so far - it might be a little out of date since the treaty has been revised once or twice since it was written, but the basics are still the same.
This is just an extention of the government's basic idea in relation to technology: give no one any privacies, anonyminity, or rights, and we can catch all the bad guys. The only problem is, the cure's worse than the disease. How much are we willing to compromise until there's a severe backlash?
So this one takes away constitutional rights, and gets around the protections - IIRC, treaties approved by legislature and the executive branch carry the same weight as the Constitution itself. Uhoh. This looks like it could be worse than the DMCA.
Although, perhaps, since it says singing states WILL create (it doesn't say that the treaty DOES) legislature banning these things, we might be OK.
This is what you call a police state. Anyone can be arrested at any time for any reason or no reason at all. Maybe I should move to the Middle East. Iraq didn't sign it.
It's scary that so many lawmakers in so many countries can make mistakes like this. It just goes to show the power of ill-informed people in large numbers. Blind agreement to treaties like this serve to establish a dangerous trend in international relations.
No longer is the United States leading in introducing new freedoms to people throughout the world, who are subject to governments offering less freedoms that are available in the United States. Instead, the rights (to due process, etc) available in the United States are gradually eaten away to become 'consistant' with the processes of other countries. No longer is America leading the way with regard to international policy. America's leadership durring the Cold War facilitated application of a degree of incluence which is so longer evident. Perhaps the 'war on terrorism' will manifest as the new cold war, and propel the United States into a leadership position once again.
Then again, it can be legitimately argued that that the United States played a leadership role in stripping it's citizens of their civil liverties on an international stage.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I don't care as much what's in the treaty. It could be that all nations must begin emptying their stockpiles of cute purple kittens for all I care. What the issue is, at least to me, is that we had little/no idea this was coming. Who's supposed to inform the public that our nation's signing crazy treaties? Most of the media's too busy with the Afghanistan operations...
Democracy is all about accountability. The reason democracy doesn't quite work is because that principle is not fulfilled. When the majority of the citizens don't know what their government is doing, then you get them signing strange purple kitten treaties. Or stuff like this. That is why it is that aspect of this treaty that I hold issue with.
________
"And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion...." -- J.S. Mill
People fear what they don't understand. Security isn't something that the average user thinks about untill they lose a credit card or so.
Hackers have a bad reputation mainly because of the media, but Linus isn't evil, the creators of Slashdot are not evil, Alan Cox isn't evil, etc... and they are all hackers. Usually hacker is used for security coders/auditors but isn't just bound to that.
This kind of leads me to wonder if it isn't ok to hack (test your security, create security based aplications, etc...) but it is ok to crack.
Does that mean that if I pirate a directv signal here in Canada (which is legal), I can be prosecuted under US law for hacking? Even though it is legal in Canada? Could someone please clarify this?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
So now getting corporate approval is the most open process available. I think I'm going to go be ill now.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
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.
I mean, it took 'em 25 years to agree on what are the ingredients of chocolate. :) These states are still sovreign, dont forget. I predict a healthy debate for ratification.
The world today seems to be slowly turning into one state.
Just hundreds of years ago, much of the world was tribal, of based on small kingdoms.. Over the past 20 centuries or so, that's changed, and the rate of change seems to be increasing.
At each step of the way, there's been trouble with clashes of law and custom as the smaller territories were integrated into the more dominant.
This treaty seems to be pulling the same kind of disgruntled reactions that have pervaded the assimilation of varying cultures over the years. Each of the signatories will most likely start to press for it's own parochial laws to be followed in all areas.
However, this will definately cause a lot of foulups. This is bad for business, and relations between countries... And, rather than risk international outcries in the 'in crowd' of signatory nations, it's likely that some form of appeasement will be made. One country doesn't press one law, on the basis that one other law in another country will be persued less vigorously across national boundaries.
Over time, something arises from the morass which is more or less workable policy. It's a small fragment of what the lawyers have written down on the statute books, but, it's something that can be followed without sinking the whole arrangement completely.
If it's going to work, people on all sides need to make compromises, and start seeing the larger pictures.. Maybe then, they'll stop getting all picky about the small things.. Just in case everyone then decides to be just as picky on them...
When things reach this scale, the system more or less follows some kind of sense, despite the lawyers.. Either that, or it falls flat on it's face, and all signatories start to breach the treaty and it fails.
Either way, it's a rough slog for a while, and then everything goes ok again...
Just my thoughts,
Malk
In reading over who signed this treaty, two important nations that were left off were Russia and China. Recently, China and Russia have tried to conform to pressure from western nations, especially the United States, in cracking down on things such as distribution of intellectual property. They've shut down warez and music download sites operating in these countries with pressure from the west. Does anyone know why China and Russia didn't take part in this?
From the text of the treaty: 1. Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to empower its competent authorities to order: a. a person in its territory to submit specified computer data in that person's possession or control, which is stored in a computer system or a computer-data storage medium; That being said, I submit the following scenario: Police: Hand over the data on your hard drive which links you to [Criminal Act X]. Innocent Citizen: I have no such data, since I was not involved in [Criminal Act X]. Police: Since you did not hand over the data, you are in violation of the CyberCrime Treaty. You are under arrest. Come with me.
I thought that you could legally clarify spamming as "unauthorized access to a computer system" in some states. If this is true, and this treaty is an "international one" then maybe perhaps something can be done about the thousands of stupid morons that actually believe SPAMMING is an effective and acceptable business practice.
:-(
I'd love to see spammers get labelled "hackers" and smacked down appropriately. However, I do worry about those testing their own network security and those of us that actually *follow* guidelines being persecuted as well.
With such changes happening so quickly it becomes clear that part of
the responsibility of the law makers is to make these new laws known
to the people and in a form they can understand and even more important,
accept.
I don't want to have to read some damn encylopedia on human made
digital law in order to then try and figure out what I can and can't
do.
Computers are a versatile tool and it's bad enough that there are those
who don't want to solve the "software crisis", but to put more and more
constraints of what can and cannot be done is not going to help find
solutions to problems many claim they want to solve.
Seems to me that the growing conflict of interest is going to get worse
and as a result there will be a cyber war. A war between those who want
to put great constraint on who can do what vs. those who know better and
want to use computers to their fullest productive potential.
If being productive becomes illegal, then it'll be easy to see who the
real criminals are, and who outnumbers who. Atlas Shrugged.
"Cannot" based IP laws are going to have to be changed to "can" based
law that rewards those genuinely responsible for new and good things.
So what there is to do now is to start figuring out how to deal with this
growing conflict of interest that's building up to war levels, and the
governments most certainly know it.
Can't let them get away with creating laws that they can then interpret
how ever the hell they want to. Thus the requirement of them to clearly
define these laws in terms the general public can understand and to
publish them for the public to genuinely see.
Otherwise it's not ignorance of the law, but rather failure to inform on
the part of the law makers and their supporters. What could be construed
as entrapment.
To start with, all products that have some sort of builtin mechanism that
prevents such things as fair use, need to have a clear and obvious label
regarding such, otherwise it is bait and switch advertising deception. The
sort of thing that wrongly subverts knowledgeable consumer choice.
Last I looked, bait and switch is very illegal, and there is a consumer
choice reason for it. Hence, there should be no supprises by the music
industry in including copy protection, by having such copy protection
mentioned and clearly viewable on the label.
The laws being created don't appear to be very honest or fair, and in fact
may very well break some laws. So who really are the criminals?
Did those supporting Hitler see him as a criminal?
Maybe it's time for the OSS community to begin writing more realistic
laws. So that when the time comes, there will be something to replace the
laws made by criminals, with. Start thinking "CAN" based IP laws that reward
the creators of values, rather then some organization that supposedly represents
them! For in the digital world great effencies can be achieved by removing alot of
fat.
.
.
Well, there is a shock. After all, YOU NASTY LITTLE HACKERS, don't deserve any input.
I realize you were probably being sarcastic, but this is the kind of misconception that is causing our civil rights to go down the toilet (even without all the post-Sept 11 hoopla). Contrary to what corporations and the government that they help run believe, not everybody in the technological community is an "evil little hacker." In fact, "evil little hackers" constitute an extremely small percentage of the tech community, probably less than 1%.
Take the recording industry for example. Contrary to what the government^WRIAA would have you believe, the vast majority of tech-oriented people are people who respect the right of artists to make money. But, of course, some of them have a problem with the cartels that are in place to enforce this. Some of them choose to make their displeasure known in different ways; for example, some of them choose to bypass the system and share mp3s directly between each other. This causes a chain reaction that snowballs into the situation we have now. No telling where it could go next. Regardless of what you think about trading mp3s, the fact is that the situation we have now is a result of a tit-for-tat that has been going on for quite some time between the industry and its consumers. One feels that the other is screwing them over, and takes action. The other doesn't like this action, and takes action of its own in response. Repeat from step 1.
Despite how blatantly false it is, many people in the government honestly believe that all techies are evil hackers. They then use this to justify passing all sorts of legislation restricting technology. Can you say "DMCA"? Legislators -- even the ones who haven't already been bought out by big corporations -- honestly believe that they are doing good by passing the crap they've been passing. But like I said, this is the result of a huge misconception.
As sad as it is, our government is run on one thing: money. Legislators tend to listen to whoever pays them the most, and this inevitably turns out to be big corporations. Because the corporations tend to have a strong dislike for techies because of tit-for-tats such as the one mentioned above, they portray them as evil hackers to both the government and the public. This propaganda is quite effective too. Large sections of the population have a negative view of techies, viewing them as "dirty little hackers," which the vast majority are certainly not.
The only thing I'm wondering now is when big corporations will pull their heads out of their asses and start to actually listen to their customers for a change. If that happens, then hopefully the government will follow suit.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
By all means, write your congresspeople, but for god's sake send a check in to the EFF already, willya?
Talking about this stuff on slashdot is useless if that's as far as it goes. Scream and shout, get involved, etc., etc., etc.
Please?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Sayeth the article:
That's the prospect that has pushed AT&T Corporation and other high-technology companies into feverishly trying to stop, or at least soften, the treaty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Information Technology Association of America also oppose it.
IANAL, but I've been watching the progress of the Cybercrime treaty as it's evolved. I've never had very much fear of it being ratified precisely because of the above statement.
The same forces that most civil libretarians usually hate, ie... heavy corporate soft-money donations in order to influence laws that favor them, will actually work *for* those who care about seeing this treaty fall by the wayside.
It's very simple. If the treaty is ratified and the U.S. passes laws in order to uphold its obligations under the treaty, then the monetary cost to business such as the big telecom carriers like ATT and MCI-Worldcom, ISP's, biggie conglomerates such as AOL-TW, MSFT, and others will be very high. These costs will come from having to hire many, many extra individuals to perform the kind of monitoring and checking necessary, installing the hardware and software to make that monitoring possible, and a host of other, unforseen costs.
These companies will spend a lot of money on Congress in the short run in order to block this treaty's ratification... and the Bush administration will probably be very receptive as well. So far the Bush administration has heavily favored these businesses. Bill G. can attest to this. This same kind of thing has happened before... notably with the Kyoto accords. Don't think that it can't happen here just because of the pressure the DOJ is putting behind it.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
That citizens of the US get two shots at opposing this treaty. Under Constitutional law, you need a *2/3* majority in the Senate to pass a treaty. (Such basic bits of International Law as the 1965 Vienna Convention on Treaties, which defines standards for, well, treaties, have never been passed by the US Senate) It's hard to get 2/3 of the Senate to agree on anything, including Evil Nefarious Hackers.
We also get a second shot, since this treaty requires enabling legislation to operate. (ie, in legalese, it's not self-executing) Let's get organized, people. Call (and I guess email, since written letters are being ignored because of the anthrax attacks) your Senators (to start with), and if that doesn't work, call your congresspeople.
-APC
(IANALY, but am about six weeks away from a post-grad degree in International Law prior to taking the bar)
"A Los Angeles screenwriter corresponds by e-mail with a neo-Nazi in Germany while researching a script. Shortly after, the screenwriter finds federal agents examining the files on his home computer."
Actually, I don't care much about the Russians searching my computers. what I care more about is that American authorities will break in here, violate basic privacy rights (seems normal for the USA to do that) and lock me up before they realize that all the MP3s on my hard disk are my own band recordings.
(Russians wouldn't know what MP3s are anyway. ;)
But this article at law.com seems (to me) very typical for the USA. They picture European countries as 'the evil ones', while assuming that we would have absolutely no problems with American authorities playing king kong on our private premises.
The USA even just blindy assumes it's OK to apply their laws to deeds that were done on other continents months ago, with no connection whatsoever to the USA legislation.
This is just very few people in the USA that are causing this 'anti-Americanism' among many European countries. These need to get real. They need to realize there are more than 51 states in the world, and that we do have electricity and TVs. (OK, that was exaggerated, but you get the point.)
</rant>
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