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 This analysis is probably the best so far - it might be a little out of date since the treaty has been revised once or twice since it was written, but the basics are still the same.

Comments

Big Suprise

[Moonshadow]

Nothing new. Just another way for government to steal personal privacies. Anyone NOT see this one coming?

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?

Re:Turning the world into a police state

[magicslax]

In Iraq you can't own a typewriter without a military lisence, much less a modem. Coming from an expatriot Iraqi family myself, trust me when I say you have more freedom, even when it _is_ restricted, than you realize. That said, this is Not Cool TM.

Unbelievably Nieve Lawmakers

[hillct]

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

The first thing...

[tsarina]

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.

what am i, chopped liver?!

[vsync64]

From the article:

The Justice Department responds by noting that, since last April, it has made numerous presentations and met repeatedly with business and other private-sector interests. It is "about as open a process as I can think of," says Betty Shave of Justice's computer crime and intellectual property section, who has represented the department in negotiations.

So now getting corporate approval is the most open process available. I think I'm going to go be ill now.

question

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Ignorance of the Law is a symptom.

[3seas]

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.
.
.

So contribute to EFF, already

[jonabbey]

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?

Why won't the U.S. ratify this treaty? - $$$

[Bonker]

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.

Re:Directv???

[SealBeater]

If you don't know the specifics, then why are you commenting about it? For
your information, its perfectly legal in Canada to intercept DirecTV satallite
signals. If he resides in Canada and is percecuted under U.S. law, its the
same situation that Dimitri was jailed for writing software that was legal in
another country. Just because something is legal/illegal in another country,
no one should persecuted in their own country if its legal in theirs.

SealBeater

Keep in Mind...

[apc]

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)

Re:Directv???

[hearingaid]

It's not legal in Canada to intercept DirecTV. It's just hard for DirecTV to prosecute Canadian pirates.

If you receive a broadcast signal in Canada that hasn't been approved by the CRTC, you're violating the Broadcasting Act. The problem for DirecTV is that the CRTC has to prosecute under the Act; since they don't have a legal right to broadcast in Canada, it's hard for them to sue under the Copyright Act, although pirates violate it as well. Unfortunately for DirecTV, Canada isn't Singapore, and in order to go after pirates under the Copyright Act, they have to show damages, usually in the form of lost revenue.