Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Considering Ratifying Cybercrime Treaty
waytoomuchcoffee writes "SecurityFocus has a new article on the Council of Europe's "Convention on Cybercrime". The U.S. has already signed the treaty, but it has not yet been ratified by the Senate (although President Bush has written a letter urging the treaty's passage). This treaty, among other items, would require the U.S.
to "cooperate with foreign authorities" in conducting surveillance on American citizens who have committed no crime under U.S. law, but may have broken another country's law (selling historic Nazi posters on Ebay? Germany might have you wiretapped), prohibiting the "production, sale or distribution of hacking tools", whatever that means (would Nmap be illegal?) and require the U.S. to pass laws to "force users to provide their encryption keys" and the plain text of their encrypted files. Canada is a signatory as well."
nothing.can.stop.me.now
Aren't we suppose to cooperate with a foreign investigation under current international laws? I can't imagine the USA standing up to a request from the British investigative branch when they're on a lead.
So they're gonna ban carpenters' tools? You know what they say... when wood screws are outlawed, only criminals will have wood screws...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I remember when the US was trying to get a guy out of Australia (can't remember who or find the article - sorry) and people said that the US would never do anything like release someone who had comitted a crime over the internet, breaking a law in another country.
Proves you wrong.
Canada is a signatory as well.
There! Happy now? Slashdot finally mentioned Canada, but it turns out you're a bunch of facists like the rest of us. W00t!
Do they have to find evidence on you first? I mean, they won't just go around asking for everyone's encryption key, so that they can find the evidence can they?
Encryption are the walls of my digital home. Anything I encrypt is private property. I feel this might set a very bad precedent if we are required to give the gov't our encryption keys..
The net is like the wild-west.. with no laws or very little.. I think we are coming to an end of that time, soon we will need corp authorization to write e-mail and have to pay to put any content only.. sad day. Also, how.. realistically could we even provide them with our encryption keys? Also couldn't they be used for political gain??
Now not only do you have to keep track of the laws in the country which you live in but also the laws of all countries who've signed this "Cyber treaty".
I remember reading here before about how you make a lot of laws and reinforce them selectively depending on who you want to take down to earth. Well it just got even easier.
Can't go to the USA, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia or China.
Well, I guess if Russia doesn't work out for us liberty loving types we can always head for Mars.
Beep beep.
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
Funny, but people around here have been complaining about the laws our government imposes on other countries for years. And the term is American, not USian--using the latter just makes you sound foolish.
This really doesn't sound like that bad of a bad thing...
:)
- If you're selling Nazi-era items on eBay, you might as well just put "Offer void in Germany and where prohibited by law, bids from such places will be disqualified." in your description. You just can't sell that kind of stuff to Germany, so don't even try.
- The encryption keys issue sounds fair to me. If you have the keys to an encrypted file and you refuse to decode it and a judge issues a warrant for that data, you have to turn it over or pay the penality for obstructing an investigation.
- The NMAP issue seems like one of FUD to me. The word "hacking" is nowhere in the actual text of the document. Of course, Slashdot would run a story that debates a treaty with a link to the treaty language itself because we reject all government actions without even needing to read what they're proposing.
If one is arrested under any charge and found to have tone dialers, packet sniffers, port scanners, etc. one can be found to be in posession of "hacking devices." (This has happend in the past to Bernie S and others.) Essentially the government has no real evidence of any crime and uses it as a catch-all or as a way to increase sentence time. The annoying part of this is that sysadmins use sniffers and scanners quite often as part of their job. It would appear this "treaty" is just to strengthen previous laws and help to catch those evil hackers...er um hopefully not sysadmins?
:(){
In the past people immigrated to the country of the free (USA) to gain true freedom, democracy and basic human rights. When those rights have been removed to increase the profit of corporation US. Will people move to Norway? No EU, no cyber treaty and they've also got their own oil! What else is there to ask for?
...our new French overlords.
It seems that this whole notion of using treaties for anything other than marking out jurisdiction over the lands and seas, or codifying who gets what at the end of a war is a huge threat to a nation's sovereignty, and, in a democratic country, the ultimate sovereignty of a country's citizenry.
The Kyoto treaty, NAFTA, and all other economic treaties are ways of sneaking in through the back door (in the United States) laws that would never be passed through legitimate means. The House of Representatives is totally left out of the loop, bypassing our most democratically representative body.
Now, apart from economic treaties, the U.S. will play handmaiden to the enforcement of foreign criminal statutes (while other countries do likewise).
This is bullshit!
Politicians are at a loss to know what to do in the face of a world rapidly being transformed by technology, and international communication and commerce; but, in an effort at being seen as "doing something about the problems of today's world" are rushing to pass laws, the consequences of which can neither be foreseen nor easily undone.
And we're the ones who are going to have to live with it.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
...that all those arch conservatives who berate the anti-Bush faction here at Slashdot still believe -- as all supporters of repressive laws do -- that it won't apply to them!
They always seem to assume that they'll be issued with an I Voted for GWB windshield sticker, which will get them saluted through the random police roadblocks and checkpoints, and they'll be given some amazing new technology which will mark their network packets as One of Us: Do Not Sniff...
I can't wait to see their faces when they are standing naked in line next to the rest of us awaiting the body cavity search...
In Canada, where we don't have the death penalty, we have used this same logic. How can we send a person to the US to possibly suffer a punishment that we don't feel is just?
The US government is being consistent on this. Their arguement tends to be - you committed (or possibly) a crime in a particular country and you should follow that countries rules.
I am not sure I totally agree with this. And it is certainly open to abuse. But so are lots of recent US laws.
is here
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Okay, for one, at the whim of another government you can now have your privacy invaded due to suspicion of a crime that isn't even a crime in this country. This is giving up our right to due process, the right to illegal search and seizure and probably other stuff I haven't thought of yet. Next it puts people we don't pay or elect in control of our interests.
I don't think our lawmakers and governing folk have the right to sign away our rights via international treaty like that.
Most of Europe has NEVER been free; hence the waves of emmigration two centuries ago to the new world; in the US there is much theoretical freedom, much of which is VERY well protected by the Constitution; the problem is with the legal system which makes these rights (a) difficult to enforce against the government and, (b) slow and uncertain to enforce for all, see all the IANAL jokes. The remedy, in the US, is in your own hands and at the ballot box.
um since most "hacking" is done via phone (social attack). do we have to get rid of phones?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
But when it comes to the privacy and free speech rights of American civilians, he could give a shit. Say, why do we have soldiers again?
Funny me, I always thought it was to protect our Freedoms(tm).
Please cite the section that makes it criminal to posess a "hacking device".
This seems to fit the bill:
[Begin Quote]
Article 6 - Misuse of devices
1. Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally and without right:
a. the production, sale, procurement for use, import, distribution or otherwise making available of:
b. the possession of an item referred to in paragraphs (a)(1) or (2) above, with intent that it be used for the purpose of committing any of the offences established in Articles 2 - 5. A Party may require by law that a number of such items be possessed before criminal liability attaches.
[End Quote]
Note that this also applies to passwords and other data. Interesting.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
What's your stance on Campaign Finance Reform?
What's your stance on the gun control?
What's your stance on the judicial activities which recently overrode state law to grant gay marriage licenses?
If you answered "I'm all for them!" to any of these questions, you have been party to the constant, deliberate erosion of Constitutional rights for the better part of 3 decades. So now you know what it feels like to have someone actively and deliberately trying to turn you into a felon tomorrow, where you weren't one today. And doing so under the guise of 'it's what's best for you'.
Welcome to the world of the libertarian and the conservative.
look like our "Free speech" still stands...
"Betty Shave, who heads the Justice Department's international computer crime division, admitted that the treaty mostly lacks so-called "duel criminality" provisions, but she countered that other language in the pact would prevent abuses. One clause in the treaty allows a country to refuse to cooperate in an investigation if its "essential interests" are threatened by the request: Shave says that would allow the U.S. to bow out of a probe targeting free speech or other actions protected by the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, political offenses are specifically excluded from some types of mutual assistance requests available under the treaty."
Lets just hope our polititions & lawyers, use that wisely... one can only hope...
[...]
I have broken no US laws, right? Because I wasn't in the US at the time?
This is an inappropriate metaphor for two reasons:
1) This story is talking about something that is a "crime" in only one of the two places involved. Murder is a crime in both the US and Mexico.
2) The death ocurred in the US, even if you fired the gun in Mexico. Even if murder wasn't illegal in Mexico, the US would definitely charge you if it could get its hands on you, since the target was on US soil.
A better metaphor for the argument at hand would be:
I go to Amsterdam and buy some marijuana in a store (legally). I come back to the US and get busted for posession (of the pot I bought in Amsterdam). When interrogated as to who my dealer is, I give them the name of the guy who runs the pot bar in Amsterdam.
USA charges guy in Amsterdam with a crime. Does the Amsterdam police force make an arrest and extradite the shop owner?
--The Rizz
"Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are." --Matt Lauer
Betty Shave, who heads the Justice Department's international computer crime division, admitted that the treaty mostly lacks so-called "duel criminality" provisions, but she countered that other language in the pact would prevent abuses. One clause in the treaty allows a country to refuse to cooperate in an investigation if its "essential interests" are threatened by the request: Shave says that would allow the U.S. to bow out of a probe targeting free speech or other actions protected by the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, political offenses are specifically excluded from some types of mutual assistance requests available under the treaty.
Basically it is saying that the only way they would lift a finger to stop a foreign country from grabing you is if you are someone important. Unfortunetely most of us don't fit that catagory.
Requiring that someone provide encryption keys would likely be construed as a violation of a U.S. citizen's Fifth Amendment rights: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." If the hard drive had incriminating evidence of ANY crime on it, then the person would be within their Constitutional rights to refuse to provide the encryption keys to access the data.
From a practical standpoint, "I can't recall" is a very effective three words sentence in such a case. It's not like any of us can honestly say that we've never forgotten a password or encryption key, so the prosecution would be hard-pressed to convince a judge and jury that such a claim is preposterous.
Is that someone who discriminates against people on the basis of their face?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
... but what are the Europeans thinking?
Sure, some Americans might have their rights side-stepped by Germany, but the US could use all of its crazy IP laws to prevent any European company from developing things like "method for clearing memory storage space ('memory') by filling said space with null digits ('zeroes')" and a multitude of common knowledge pieces of software covered by ridiculous patents.
True story.
Uhm, how is "gun control" and "campaign finance reform" libertarian? That's the exact opposite of the libertarian stance.
Oh, and gay marriage should not be illegal. Wanna talk about unconstitutional...?
Or am I misunderstanding your post?
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
I've looked through this treaty, and it appears that the only explicit mention of encryption is that each participating country must ensure that if they have encryption keys needed to help another participating country, they should hand them over (i.e. Country A got Mr. Baddy's RSA key during an investigation and he is being tried in Country B for another offense. Country A should give the key to Country B to help them). Presumably, the key must be obtained by legal means in country A before it can be given to country B. They also mention that encryption should be used, if necessary, to ensure secure communications between the governments... I would hope this is the case anyway.
This treaty doesn't expand the definition of computer crime really. All it is is a promise between countries that if someone commits a crime in another participating country, the other countries will turn over the criminal. To me, this makes perfect sense-- think about it. If someone from a european nation stole your credit card information, for example, you would want them to be accountable for their damages, even if you were an american, right?
====
Crudely Drawn Games
When big brother denies your fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination and demands the key or you rot in prison, hand over the key that decrypts the decoy text and say, "See. It was just some stupid email about my car."
Of course you'd have to encrypt everything to be consistent, but that's not really a bad idea anyway.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
prohibiting the "production, sale or distribution of hacking tools"
So they are about to ban all computers, eh?
Due to lack of math education, lawyers and authorities simply cannot understand what an universal computation machine is, a math abstraction. So they really want to outlaw a class of abstract algorithms. I would call that idiocy, but I wan't be moderated down troll so I call it ignorancy.
So at the 2024 we who keep around all open source packages ever touched, will be all using Quake 13's "scanning mod" feature instead of illegal nmap...
If it goes really, really wrong with the law, we can always implement a Turing machine with cells represented by file names of silly word documents in a single directory. Written in shell or cmd, it could still be faster than mainframes were 30 years ago.
With that, say HOW one can distinguish DATA from CODE, if one cannot grasp the semantics?
Or example for an underground network: today's sending a tcp packet would be equivalent of emailing little stego message perfectly fitted with up-to-day security content check standards. TCP over email on broadband will be faster then modems we had 10 years ago.
There is only way out: Force authorities to make world a better place for living, not for doing bussinesses only.
There you are, staring at me again.
If one had a safe, and said safe was completely uncrackable, and there was a good likelyhood that the critical piece of evidence to a crime was inside it, could the owner of the safe be forced to divulge the combination? This is how I envision encryption keys. Honestly, under the fifth amendment, I'm not sure.
If this were passed, would countries that don't have annoying 4th and 5th amendments be able to force Americans to divulge their keys or risk extradition?
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Well, they might as well round up all our guns at the same time, give us identity chips for our own "security," officially revoke the Bill of Rights, and set up a UN shrine with mandatory attendance, so there will be no more doubt to anyone what they're all about.
Then all the crazies can retreat to the hills with their shotguns and claymores, and finally have that Armageddon they've been waiting for.
I'm not saying that this WILL happen this way, since I think that the powers-that-be are way too subtle for that. They know all too well that a frog will jump out of boiling water, but will allow itself to be cooked if done so gradually.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
In the case of CFR - an utter violation of the 1st amendment. Not only does it limit speech, it limits the single most important type of speech - political.
Gun control - despite reams and reams of intensely clear writings by the founding fathers, and the clear English reading of the 2nd amendment, we have judges and legislatures turning gun owners into felons everywhere.
In the case of gay marriage - judges overriding WRITTEN LAWS to suit their own political bent is judicial activism. This is explicitly uncontitutional, and was a hugely important issue to the old Federalists (heck, Jefferson too).
We are not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. And the particular beauty of our constitution is that it works 2 ways. It protects the majority from tyrannizing the minority and it protects the minority from tyrannizing the majority. The above are examples of simply saying 'Eh, in this case, who cares?' and it's been going on for decades.
This particular instance comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with people willing to sign away their rights. Perhaps it'll do some good and wake up the 'UN RULES!' crowd. :/
of this is not so much what it allows other governments to do to US citizens, which will probably not end up amounting to much in a any case (can you imagine, for instance, the US cooperating with the Chinese govt on prosecution, if the Chinese were to sign this treaty? No way). The interesting aspect of this is that it will strengthen the powers of the US to conduct surveillance on non-US citizens in other countries which have signed the treaty. This, of course, is the reason Dubya wants it ratified.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
The summary of the subject has been enough to inspire a response before I know anything about the subject.
Unless physical harm or theft occurs, nations should ignore "crimes" that occur in other countries. Regardless of explanation, this will doubtless open me to flaming so please pause a moment while I don my asbestos underwear.
Germany's "anti-Nazi" laws are a source of humor to rest of the world as a sign of being unable to admit their history. Get over it.
Every country has stupid, foolish, dated, retarded, outdated laws on their books. Do you want to be held to the social standards of Mozambique? Do you want the narrow-minded laws of France to be a community standard? What about the many laws of American books regarding outdated sexual customs? (Oral sex is actually a crime in many places!?)
This post has rapidly deteriorated from the cerebral imagings with which I began. Flame on.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Right, the Senate passes treaties -- my whole point exactly.
The Senate is designed to be somewhat insulated from the vagaries of popular opinion: they are up for election only once every six years. Moreover, as a body of only 100 members, they are supposed to be able to act more decisively.
The House, by contrast, is made up of many more members, each of which is up for election every two years. By design, the House is supposed to be more representative.
Together, the House is supposed to represent popular opinion, and the Senate is supposed to cool the passions of the masses; together, along with the President, laws are passed -- in theory, at least, balanced laws.
Treaties, by contrast, are ratified by the Senate after being presented by the President. The House is left totally out of the loop. As treaties enjoy the full force of law, this creates a tendency for more elitist, less populist laws.
Now, because you had to start with your "who modded this idiot up" nonsense, I have had to give you a lesson in U.S. government -- so much so that I myself would be tempted to mod this whole thread down as a "troll."
Think before you shoot that idiot mouth of yours off, next time.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
The main points are:
1. A provision of a treaty, which conflicts with this Constitution, shall not be of any force or effect.
2. A treaty shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation, which would be valid in the absence of a treaty.
Click for more details.
Would you care to elaborate? Someone might just dismiss your comment as the knee-jerk reaction of an "anti-Amercian, tree-hugging environmentalist" upset over being reminded that his cause celebre (the Kyoto treaty) was shot down in this country over these very same concerns of sovereignty.
There's "loonies" on every side of the political spectrum, you know.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Welcome to the rest of the world.
If you don't like that sentiment, think of the Europeans and Australians held in Cuba by Americans because of actions in Afghanistan. How's it taste to eat your own dogfood?
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I think what Timothy was getting at was the criminality of a _German_ purchasing a Nazi poster should not be imposed upon an _American_. I can't imagine that the German government would waste time trying to prosecute an American on such grounds... in that sense perhaps Timothy was using a little hyperbole.
But let's say for arguements sake that they did. What right does the German government have to impress their mores upon American citizens? (I do not wish to argue about the capitalist, nationalist, imperialist pig-dog Americans doing that to other "poor and defenseless" nations. Any comments related as such will be ignored)
All I'm asking for is "dual criminality" language. As I stated in one of my other comments, I do not wish to see my Constitutional protections (freedoms, call them what you will) "protected" by some itty-bitty clause. As an American, all I have is my Constitutional freedoms... I expect that my government do its damndest to _protect_ them everywhere, even at the U.N.
...has a pretty good idea where all the major nodes are, and the trunks, etc.
With that said, I think it would be quite fair to assume that they have contingency plans that immediately before, or concurrent with a major "crack down" into fuller despotism (a real or staged-real terrorist incident, for instance), they will have enough willing "order followers" to assume physical control of those facilities. All of them. Count on it.
And for those that say they couldn't run them even if they did, think again. They already have on the books laws that they can use to "draft" you on the spot,for specific work related duties, plus for the assumption of "ownership" of just about anything you can name, and refusing or trying to refuse becomes an automatic serious felony, and the penalities can be whatever the emergency military governor deems them to be. They can be quite severe, BTW. In such a situation it wouldn't requite too many examples to get folks back to the consoles working, and sabotage would be eventually found, leading to some more "examples", and etc.
This government has never been shy of "collateral damage", and this government, either directly or via contracted or coerced proxies, kills people daily and has done so as far back as I can remember.
People really need to read the homeland security act, patriot acts, and the model states health emergency act(there's more, those are crucial to grok though), the latter actually being much worse civil liberties-wise than the previous two, but much less known about or talked about.
As a side issue, as far as I am aware of now, all commercial radio and television stations have government "take over" boxes in them, that the government can activate automatically and remotely and completely control what information is being broadcast. In short, they have the clear potential to have an almost total lock on the dissemination of information on their whim and schedule. Not 100% complete, but so close as to make the exceptions be statistically insignificant. It doesn't take much to see the abuse potential here, of course, It's sold as a public service and they "promise" to be nice guys all the time and not lie or be less than honest, etc. Really. They promise.
uh huh
The above article is a further refutation to those who always spout "eww, that's tin foil hat". The one step at a time, slow boiling frog approach is the technique they use for..well, coming total enslavement to be frank about it, a master/serf technofuedalistic styled society of complete surveillance and control (and exploitation) of your lives. the ancient fiuedalistic system, just with advanced technology. Quite possible, many references showing that's what they desitre broadly speaking, and the evidence shows that is the direction they are headed, ie, history is repeating itself, ni\othing new there, because humans tend to not want to learn from history, it's.... too hard, interferes with day to day life and entertainments and ordinary hassles. So, it gets ignored.
That's their goal, and so far every step of the way that HAS been implemented has also been WARNED ABOUT in advance by people who were told they were wrong, when in fact, they have been consistently correct in this extrpolative position and series of observations and analysis."They" want a form of world government with total control over the population of the planet, and nothing less than that. It's still a ways off,not too far but a ways, but looking back 20 years and seeing how things have changed, anyone may look forward, contemplate it in the fact of a variant of "moores law" being applied to all aspects of technology and governments insatiable use of same, and see what is happening now and their bent, to make a fair assessment of what is coming.
Failure to do so is ill advised, failure to *do something about it while you still can* is suicidal.
example :: under certain conditions, you could consider a hammer a burglary tool.
the problem, most of the time, is the ignorance of the ones making the law and also the ones upholding (and interpreting) it.
now think about nmap, nessus and so on and so on...
hell, even a computer can be seen as a tool for comitting cybercring.
Privacy is terrorism.
Oh, you want the... Well, sorry sir, but I accidently dropped the magnetic medium my one-time pad was on on top of this here supermagnet. Sorry; Hope you got a few centuries spare on a Cray. Don't scare me like that next time!
Sorry officer, I always keep my floppies together with magnets. Oh... You mean magnets erase floppies? Oops...
It always astounds me, to see people attempt to justify misfortune or undesirable circumstances. As if any ability to understand the disagreeable situation will result to it resolving your way.
At home, watching TV, a commercial interrupts my program. As many people do, I often decide that I don't want to be bothered by such a pathetic thing and I flip the channel. If that company wants to get it's message to me, they better bust through my door, destroy my remote control and pin me to ground facing the TV and insist my life depended on my viewing and accepting the advertisement.
When a small crowd forms outside a politicians office, or a CEOs office, well, he can't flip the channel but he can close his blinds. The problem here comes from Americans actually believing these people gives a rats ass what the public thinks. No, they don't, if noone voted a President, Senator, Congressman, Sheriff would still be put in their respective positions.
Words, nomatter how truthful they are, are nothing more than subtle sound waves traveling through the air. But the decibels released from a hammer smashing ontop of a solid oak wood desk, now that's a little difficult to ignore. If a politician, as so many often do, flutters their blinds, tie your message to a rock; you can figure out what to do next.
Bottom line, if your beliefs aren't so strong that you are compelled to physically protect them, then anything to the contrary is not really a problem.
Here's the real kicker:
When I view history, I am disgusted. The conditions everyday citizens of France endured just before the French Revolution, the horrid degrading circumstances the Germans endured just before Hitler came to power. How can people let so much go by before standing up for themselves? It's almost enough, to say those everday people deserved nothing more than to starve to death, even requesting it by nature of tolerance.
In America, where the media has pounded pacificism into the minds of it's citizens, the tyrannical corporations and puppet so-called-democratic governments of this world is going to rape and pillage us all. And it's sickening to foresee how much farther they are likely able to go.
of the American Constitution requires that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
In a 1996 paper Greg S. Sergienko explains that in America, the Fifth Amendment would give a suspect the right to refuse handing over encryption keys.
I agree with that analysis.
Therefore, I think that any legislation based on Article 19 of the Cybercrime Treaty would only enable law enforcement authorities to request encryption keys from third parties who run no risk to be prosecuted themselves. Article 19 should not be constructed as requiring self-incrimination.
Lenz Blog
"Last time I checked, it seems the only rights you have in the U.S. are to privacy and to not be offended.
:).
Neither of these are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution."
Then it is time to make it apart of the constitution. Enough with this penis-vagina anti gay people amendment no one needs, lets get a useful privacy amendment started.
This is what I really didn't like from the summary:
"...pass laws to force users to provide their encryption keys and the plain text of their encrypted files"
That is insane. If someone has documents in which they would be embarrased to have shared (yes, I'm looking at your direction the pro-animal necrophilia crowd) then what business is it of government's that they have them.
One interesting solution to having to hand over your pass keys is provided by the Phonebook Encryption Project. This program encrypts a file to have TWO keys which will decrypt into TWO different files. One key decrypts the file to reveal the beastiality porno, one key decrypts the file for pictures of barney the dinosaur
Also those that say Freenet wouldn't be necessary in North America, I thought the same for the Phonebook project just yesterday. Now I am very glad both Freenet and Phonebook are here.
One interesting solution to having to hand over your pass keys is provided by the Phonebook Encryption Project. This program encrypts a file to have TWO keys which will decrypt into TWO different files. One key decrypts the file to reveal the beastiality porno, one key decrypts the file for pictures of barney the dinosaur
But I don't want to have to re-encrypt all of my lesbian snuff films! Oh well...stupid government. <sigh>
I am scared, government is going crazy.
After (if) Kerry get's it lets get the Green party (or make our own) to fight against all this bullshit.
Adgenda:
-Unsign this piece of shit cyber crime treaty
-Revoke DMCA
-Revoke the 20 year copyright extention
-Put copyright to 30ish years
-Outlaw any kind of lobbying
-Law (and amendment) to guarentee privacy
Anything else? Brain storm here, post your ideas (use anonymous coward if you want). I'll leave a link later for other interested people.
Funny how they'll sigh this thing, but won't agree to stop using landmines ...
...
Yeah, I know they're not related but somehow cybercrime just made me think of landmines
http://www.icbl.org/country/usa/
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
I run Uberhacker.Com, a site primarily focused on PHP security. We also run a section in our Forums dedicated to Fighting the CyberCrime Treaty. Please visit the forums if you are interested in the topic, check out the forums and sign up.
No time to read the article (I'm becomming a good /.er) or most of the comments - finals and such - so I apologize if another has said this. One of the cases I read today is the one Yahoo! filed in response to the French ruling [Yahoo!, Inc. v. La Ligue Contre le Racisme et l'Antisémitisme, et al. (CA, 2001)]. It was only a Cal. case, but the court said something very basic which the feds will have trouble with: even if a person in the US does something on the internet which violates laws in another country, so long as that action is protected in the US (such as under the first amendment), US courts cannot enforce any foreign judgement.
Since treaties are subservient to the Constitution, I think selling Nazi posters is gonna remain a US right.
You should see the equipment to get into a locked house sometime. My personal favorite is a shockwave gun that knocks the pins up and into place. There is also the freezy-heaty gun that freezes the pins in an upward position, then heats the lower pins until they fall into position. Neither of these will allow anyone to know they have been hacked. Then there are traditional lock picking techniques, which take longer. In a pinch, you can always just pound down the door with a piece of concrete, or break a window.
They don't want a copy of your house key because they don't need your house key to get in your house. That data is not secure. Even picks for those nice, safe-looking round locks can be had for about 400 dollars. But what they can't do is break strong encryption. If you put a good system on your computer with a well-chosen key, and make sure there isn't a keylogger installed on your keyboard, or a trojan, or a camera pointed at your fingers... Well, OK, there are ways around it. But after they catch you the only way to open that data is in your head. This violates their whole "hit it with something large until it opens" strategy, so they need that key from you.
That's why they're going for your encryption keys, but not your house keys. It's not because encryption keys aren't sacred, but because your house protection is trivial.
The ______ Agenda
Oh boy, emacs will be illegal!!!!
Now I am sad.
I agree, voting doesn't matter in America. As the Merovengian tells Morpheus and crew in Reloaded, Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those with out.
;-)
The only way out is through a type of revolution the prevailing authorities do not expect. Going by THIER laws will get you no where, you must break THIER laws to show the fundumental flaws with in THIER laws.
Sadly, many Americans are so damned lazy, ignorant, and complaisant that as long as we feel "safe" we are willing to give away our freedom to a ever increasing goverment.
Which reminds me of a quite, paraphrased, from Benjamin Franklen, who, when asked by a women what kind of goverment they created he said "A democracy, if you can keep it."
We need to rid ourselves or souless corperations that have more rights than mere mortals do. Companies are not humans, they are run by humans, which means the are inherently IMperfect. To keep those imperfections to a minimum we need goverment to step in and "govern".
Sadly, this will never happen under this or any other administration. Our politicians have been bought and will continue to do the will of there corperate powers.
Revolution, the kind that we had a little over 200 years ago, is the only way we will be able to bring goverment back into balance with the people, and even then, a little revolution here and there would be a good thing to keep any kind of goverment in check.
Though by posting this now at this time, rest assured, if I have not been target already, I have been now but Rumsfeild and crew.
I need to retreat and stock up on some tin foil!
Which, given Ashcroft's history will probably be fine by them....
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
The Ninth goes hand in hand with the Tenth:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
In other words:
The Ninth: Even if we didn't mention them, you have your rights.
The Tenth: If we didn't talk about it, the Feds can't do it.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
From the available information, the bad ideas in it came straight from the DOJ representatives who sat in on the conferences at which the treaty was drafted. Did a published article on this for 8wire back in 2001. Unfortunately, 8wire is out of business. From the SecurityFocus article, it appears that everything that was wrong with it back then still is.
Judging by all the anti-American trolls here on Slashdot, you would think that such legislation was only possible in a land corrupted by people like Jack Valenti and John Ashcroft.
By and large, the bad ideas that the EU government is rushing to adopt are MADE IN USA. The DMCA clones (see EU Copyright Directive) that the EU has mandated for adoption by EU nations are a good example. The only purpose is to protect the Hollywood content cartel.
Doesn't it make you proud to be an American?
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