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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."
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..
Why should they cooperate for something that's not a crime in America? Should they cooperate if, say, the Saudi police were investigating you for putting pictures of your girlfriend in a bikini on your web site, for example?
The simple fact is this law would be nonsense, but a great way for the US government to harass Americans: you can't legally harass a US citizen? No problem, just ask your mates in Germany to ask you to do so.
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.
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.
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.
Your Dwindling Protections Online.
Your Rights haven't changed.
"If you have the keys to an encrypted file and you refuse to decode it and a judge issues a warrant for that data"
That amounts to being asked to incriminate oneself. They'd only *need* to ask for that if they didn't have enough evidence against you to convict you.
Besides, keys really do get lost. I have some encrypted files from a machine which I forgot to back up, so I don't have the private key any longer. My bad, sure, but should I really go to jail for it? There's nothing in those files that would work against me, but they don't know that. I don't think it is appropriate for them to be able to jail me until I prove that I'm innocent.
"The NMAP issue seems like one of FUD to me. The word "hacking" is nowhere in the actual text of the document."
Er, check out this text, Article 2:
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, the access to the whole or any part of a computer system without right. A Party may require that the offence be committed by infringing security measures, with the intent of obtaining computer data or other dishonest intent, or in relation to a computer system that is connected to another computer system.
I've bolded the significant part. They're saying that the laws can be constructed such that you can be punished for "infringing security measures" "in relation to a computer system that is connected to another computer system". Since the latter is basic networking, and is the basic building block of the Internet, and "infringing security measures" could mean trying to connect to a firewalled port (or successfully, accidentally getting through a firewall because of a misconfiguration), nmapping could count.
This is bad news. There's not enough protections in the treaty to prevent abuse by the government.
[...]
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
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.
...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.
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.
The simple fact is this law would be nonsense, but a great way for the US government to harass Americans: you can't legally harass a US citizen? No problem, just ask your mates in Germany to ask you to do so.
That's right. These evil Germans. During the last years I lived in several different countries, and I can tell you this: The US is most unfree country of all the western countries I ever lived in.
Strictes speed limits, strictes drug laws (no alcohol in public, prison for some weed), longest prison times, broadest rights for law-enforcement (though that is changing), no (my god) nudity, censored TV, worst education (creationism vs. darwinism anyone)... The list goes on and on.
Ironically people here are so brainwashed that they call it "The Land of the Free". What a joke!
So don't quote German law as harrasment (even in case this was just a joke), because they forbid trade of "historic" Nazi material. And BTW if caught trading illegal Nazi materials in Germany, there no fine or jail time, you are just forced to stop it.
Maybe foreign law enforcement will bring some sanity to this f*cked up legal system.
Man. What ever happened to "We the People"?
require the U.S. to pass laws to "force users to provide their encryption keys"
I can't believe we're agreeing to this. What are they thinking?
"The treaty is already being used as a pretext in some developing nation to pass some pretty draconian laws," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised to see it used in the U.S. that way."
And we're thinking of ratifying this? We can already see what other countries are doing with it. How bad does it have to get before we force the Government to stop this madness. I'm serious. This is getting bad and has to stop. DeMoCrAt along with Patriot Act and now this? It's frustrating.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Well, for the most part and only in my experience, Darwinism is synonymous with macro evolution and is thought to be antithetical to creationism.
The threats surrounding child abuse are probably much the same here. A teacher can't even give a kid a ride home anymore without being accused of trying to make a pass at the kid, raping him/her, or whatever. Parents have similar problems. A kid can just say "my dad hit me" and then the dad goes to jail for child abuse, whether it can be proven or not to a jury of his peers. Both of these problems, which appear to be extensions of the same problem, are themselves symptomatic of a much larger problem that infests society at all levels. Political Correctness seems to be a symptom of the problem as well, but I haven't yet managed to peg the problem itself. :(
Education is a big political issue, but it's also an issue where the only real power lies at the local level. A candidate for president is pretty much required to say "better education", but there's ain't jack shit he can do about it. Bush said a lot of that, but as a result of his work as governor in Texas we wound up with a bunch of illiterate graduates. Working in fast food I actually had to teach kids with diplomas how to read #1CB. Not just what it meant, but what the # symbol meant, and what a 1 was, and what a C was, and what a B was. Corporate interests appear to be staying out of education, except to sponsor events (a good thing) and to sponsor other stuff (mostly a good thing, I don't have any bad examples), but since the people ultimately in charge of education are elected officials, the numbers used to show successful policies frequently don't indicate success or failure, such as the HIgh School drop-out rate (frequently affected by factors an elected official has nothing to do with. In Texas, under Bush, this number was manipulated by either handing out diplomas when someone threatened to drop out, as is what happened with my wife, or by writing them out of the books entirely so they don't show as a drop-out). Sucks, don't it? ;)
Math is about the only area that doesn't come under fire, so it's not surprising that math does well, overall. Literature is frequently censored in one form or other (my high school refused to carry some works of Shakespeare, they were lewd, and we actually had to fight to be allowed to watch the 1984 movie). History is selectively censored, with the biggest censorship happening with regards to the Indian Wars and early colonization. Spain is always the bad guy (and maybe they really were, historically, but it's hard to tell when England is also almost always the bad guy, until you get to WWII, and I *know* they weren't always bad guys, historically). Mexico is usually a bad guy, too, and Canada is always just a copy of the US (historically accurate, right? ;) ). Australia actually gets presented pretty badly, too, come to think of it. But the Aussie government's dominance of the aboriginal tribes is usually glossed over, probably to be consistent with our own history in that regard.
American schools suck. They perpetuate a lot of myths, such as the myth that Thanksgiving as a holiday has been practiced ever since the pilgrims showed up on the Mayflower, or the myth that the West was conquered because the so-called Indians couldn't keep their word (this one actually got a lot of attention in High School, but in lower schools it was taught that the Indians were pure scalping evil), or the myth that the Civil War was fought with the altruistic purpose of freeing the slaves (yes, it was fought to free the slaves, but not over altruism, over money instead). The US internment of a whole bunch of Asian-descended people during WWII is generally left out of the material entirely because the material is deemed to resemble the concentration camps in Europe of the time a little too much. Not to mention, we can't have ever been racist in our history, the US does no evil, right? It wouldn't tak
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