U.S. Senate Ratifies Cybercrime Treaty

espo812 writes "A story from Washingtonpost.com says, 'The Senate has ratified a treaty under which the United States will join more than 40 other countries, mainly from Europe, in fighting crimes committed via the Internet.' Ars Technica says it's the 'World's Worst Internet Law.'" From the Ars story: "According to the EFF, 'The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries' 'cybercrime' laws--even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdictions' requests to log their users' behavior without due process, or compensation.;"

Sigh, Slashdot editors win again!

[Lost+Found]

It wasn't Ars Technica that said it's the "World's Worst Internet Law" - that's the EFF. The only time Ars Technica uses that name is in quoting the EFF's opinion. If you RTFA, Ars Technica actually has a less worried view.

Perhaps they should make it an international Internet crime to post stories without checking even the most basic facts (ie, first two paragraphs of the document you link to).

Re:Clearly a Constitutional Issue

[jlowery]

Interesting information from Wikipedia:

"The U.S. is not a party to the Vienna Convention. However, the State Department has nonetheless taken the position that it is still binding, in that the Convention represents established customary law. The U.S. habitually includes in treaty negotiations the reservation that it will assume no obligations that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution. However, the Vienna Convention provides that states are not excused from their treaty obligations on the grounds that they violate the state's constitution, unless the violation is manifestly obvious at the time of contracting the treaty. So for instance, if the US Supreme Court found that a treaty violated the US constitution, it would no longer be binding on the US under US law; but it would still be binding on the US under international law, unless its unconstitutionality was manifestly obvious to the other states at the time the treaty was contracted. It has also been argued by the foreign governments (especially European) and by international human rights advocates that many of these US reservations are both so vague and broad as to be invalid. They also are invalid as being in violation of the Vienna Convention provisions referenced earlier."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_law_of _the_United_States [wikipedia.org]

AFAIK, the constitutionality of any treaty has yet to be tested. As in matters of military law, SCOPUS might be very reticent to take on a treaty case involving international agreements.

Yeah, Ars Technica actually thinks this is GOOD

[ToastyKen]

Ars Technica did not say it's the "World's Worst Internet Law." The EFF did. Poster needs to go RTFA.

Indeed. The Ars Technica article put "World's Worst Internet Law" in quotes for a reason. In fact, it flat out DISAGREES with EFF, even, and says that, "Given these safeguards, fears of political persecutions seem overblown," and that "the Convention provides enough safeguards to prevent the worst kinds of abuse, and additional protocols can always be negotiated if problems become insurmountable."

The treaty explicitly allows us to preserve rights

[ToastyKen]

Yes, I'm not new here, but people need to RTFM, including the submitter. From the Ars article, just a little further than halfway down:

The goal of the treaty is not to let the Chinese crack down on dissidents living in America, however, and so countries may refuse to cooperate with requests that involve a "political offence" or if a country believes the request would "prejudice its soverignty, security, ordre public or other essential interests." The US Department of Justice has already announced [securityfocus.com] that "essential interests" would allow the US to refuse any request that would violate the Constitution.

Re:Clearly a Constitutional Issue

[TFGeditor]

From TFA: The Convention on Cybercrime does recognize this, and to its credit provides a set of exceptions to mutual assistance that should help prevent the worst abuses. The Convention does require members to adopt similar legislation on the following issues: illegal access, illegal interception of computer data, data interference, system interference, misuse of devices, computer-related fraud and forgery, child pornography, and copyright violations "on a commerical scale." The goal of the treaty is not to let the Chinese crack down on dissidents living in America, however, and so countries may refuse to cooperate with requests that involve a "political offence" or if a country believes the request would "prejudice its soverignty, security, ordre public or other essential interests." The US Department of Justice has already announced that "essential interests" would allow the US to refuse any request that would violate the Constitution.

Given these safeguards, fears of political persecutions seem overblown, as do concerns that these requests will simply be issued directly from Beijing (which is not a signatory) to Comcast HQ without court oversight.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who disagree, there is a movement called anoNet that created a seperate internet. In early 2005, a few people fed up with the way the Internet was heading, began in earnest to create a large wide area network that was secure and lived in its own space. On this new network anyone would be free to do as they saw fit - roam about, host services, or just be social without fear of being monitored or even worse censored. The first step to bring this network to fruition was to encrypt the information that normally travels across the Internet. anoNet is a full IP network with many users, an IRC network, wiki, SILC, email, web, PGP, and much much more. For more information: http://www.anonet.org/ [anonet.org] or http://anonetnfo.brinkster.net/ [brinkster.net]

Re:Clearly a Constitutional Issue

[jaelle]

My, you are a trusting soul, aren't you?

Remember Guantanamo? Our illustrious leaders might "choose" not to enforce unconstitutional requests...but they don't *have* to. That's what makes it obscenely scary. They're more likely to enforce it selectively, as power is *always* wont to do.