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Cybercrime Treaty Ratified

by TChris

Update: The ACLU's response is here.

original post:

Should the United States help a foreign country investigate conduct -- political activism, for instance -- that wouldn't be illegal in the U.S.? That's one of the controversies surrounding an international treaty to combat cybercrime that the Senate ratified yesterday.

It says Internet providers must cooperate with electronic searches and seizures without reimbursement; the FBI must conduct electronic surveillance "in real time" on behalf of another government; that U.S. businesses can be slapped with "expedited preservation" orders preventing them from routinely deleting logs or other data.

What's controversial about those requirements is that they don't require "dual criminality"--in other words, Russian security services investigating democracy activists could ask for the FBI's help in uncovering the contents of their Yahoo Mail or Hotmail accounts, or even conducting live wiretaps.

"Our primary concern is that there's no dual criminality within the mutual assistance provisions," said Danny O'Brien, activism coordinator with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "The U.S. is now obliged to investigate and monitor French Internet crimes, say, and France is obliged to obey America's requests to spy on its citizens, for instance--even if those citizens are under no suspicion for crimes on the statute books of their own country."

In many respects, the treaty simply reflects existing U.S. law, and many in the software industry applaud the tools it provides to crack down on copyright infringement. But other apsects of the treaty may go too far in sacrificing the privacy interests of computer users.

In a letter to senators last summer (click here for PDF), the Electronic Privacy Information Center attacked the treaty for offering only "vague and weak" privacy protections. One section, for example, would force participating nations to have laws forcing individuals to disclose their decryption keys so that law enforcement could seize data for investigations, EPIC wrote.

Even conservatives -- usually great friends of law enforcement -- are troubled by what "liberals" could do under the treaty.

Distrust of "leftists," "internationalists," and "Eurocrats" is palpable. "Even worse, the Cybercrime Treaty is open to all nations to ratify," writes one commentator. "That means a future leftist President could even allow Communist China to sign on to the treaty and direct U.S. law enforcement to investigate Chinese dissidents, even Americans, based in the United States."

Sure, because the left hates human rights and privacy, and it wants nothing more than to spy on ordinary Americans who haven't committed a crime. Oh, wait.

Or again, "the treaty could allow European or even Chinese Communist agents to electronically spy on innocent Americans." The Europeans, as the Convention's drafters, come in for special flogging--"greater control over what we do on the Internet is the goal of the Eurocrats so enamored with global government."

The Justice Department claims that treaty allows the U.S. to reject any request that would violate the U.S. Constitution, but this might provide small comfort since the Justice Department has evinced a limited appreciation of the Constitution's protective reach.

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    Re: Cybercrime Treaty Ratified (none / 0) (#1)
    by roy on Fri Aug 04, 2006 at 01:58:53 PM EST
    The US is good at manipulating other countries, not so much the other way around. I'm not too worried about the DOJ becoming another country's b*tch; I'm worried about the US government using foreign governments as proxies to initiate investigations of acts that the legislative process couldn't make criminal, or alleged crimes for which probable cause can't be met. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to picture a Right- or Left-dominated federal government abusing this power.

    Re: Cybercrime Treaty Ratified (none / 0) (#2)
    by Sailor on Fri Aug 04, 2006 at 04:24:48 PM EST
    Roy, good point. It's just more of the New World Odor.

    Re: Cybercrime Treaty Ratified (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Aug 04, 2006 at 08:05:25 PM EST
    yep, a back door to montitor US citizens through other countries. Given what's left of the 4th amendment this is even more disconcerting.

    re (none / 0) (#4)
    by yukero on Fri Dec 15, 2006 at 04:29:37 AM EST
    The US is good at manipulating other countries, not so much the other way around. I'm not too worried about the DOJ becoming another country's b*tch; I'm worried about the US government using foreign governments as proxies to initiate investigations of acts that the legislative process couldn't make criminal, or alleged crimes for which probable cause can't be met. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to picture a Right- or Left-dominated federal government abusing this power.

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