U.S. Senate Ratifies Cybercrime Treaty 192
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.;"
Well, the term "worst" depends upon whether (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Liberty Trade (Score:1, Insightful)
Damn, I guess I'll never get my $ back from that...um...medication I ordered.
Re:Clearly a Constitutional Issue (Score:3, Insightful)
All the laws in the world... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aka - you don't stand a chance in HELL to police the internet. Anyone who think so ought to get their brain examined.
Data is like fluids, you can't filter everything - it's bound to get in everywhere at some time. And the number of data you'd have to filter is increasing with such a speed that there's no chance that ANY law system would be able to hire enough personnel or create software to control it all.
Want a real life example? Take spam - you can't control that either, and we have laws on it already almost EVERYWHERE - but does it work? Didn't work 10 years ago, not 5 years ago - doesn't work today, won't work in the future. Fluids will get in everywhere anywhere anytime.
Best way to filter is utilizing the individuals using the computers, mind filtering --> the no 1. filter in this world. The very same filter can also be used to FIND the content you really want rather than looking trough heaps of endless useless information (spam).
Even if they DID control the net (or the way we access the net) they would be unable to do so - because information always finds a way just like fluid, another net - wireless or by wire...doesn't matter. You can't stop the flow of information now, way too late! And thank goodness for that.
And... it works both ways. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even worse, in the U.K. they could be extradited without the evidence even having to be disclosed to a judge or anyone else due to a treaty (supposedly to be only for terrorist cases but recently used on a fraud charge) with the U.S.A. which the U.K. has ratified but the U.S.A. has refused to. Now, that's scary!
Re:Well, the term "worst" depends upon whether (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Not lawful, is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I've Had It! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've Had It! (Score:3, Insightful)
All those bad other countries (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wait, since torture is illegal in the US, maybe those countries can be of use after all. Better not get our agents in legal trouble. What countries are those anyways? Are they US allies in the fight against terror and for a free and democratic world, like Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Columbia or rather evil countries like Venezuela and France?
Fortunately our courts are not so easily bought (Score:3, Insightful)
"From the article: '...researchers found, for instance, that "judicial nominations" have consumed steadily more Congressional attention between 1997 and 2004. "
As they say, this too, shall pass.
Not for long, though (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for long, I think. In fact, the whole post-9/11 draconian government thing is rapidly dying in the UK, Tony Blair just doesn't realise it yet (or at least doesn't admit to realising it in public).
Yes, there was the recent case of three banking executives who were transferred to the US under dubious circumstances. However, that caused a huge political storm, because the "anti-terror" legislation was clearly being used for something that had nothing to do with safeguarding the land from terrorists. In this case, I suspect that either the US will ratify the treaty and agree the reverse as well very soon, or the UK government will be forced to pull out.
It's the same story elsewhere. Just this week, Walter Wolfgang, the long-standing Labour party member removed by heavies from last year's party conference for daring to heckle Jack Straw over the war on Iraq and then denied re-entry under anti-terror laws(!), was elected by the party membership to their national governing body. Not only does he get to speak at the next conference as a result, it seems he's guaranteed the chance to do so from the same platform as Blair et al.
ID cards and the National Identity Register... Ah, yes, New Labour's greatest threat. Except, of course, that even those people who would like to be involved with it as a lucrative business opportunity are openly questioning whether the government's scheme can even be implemented, never mind bring the claimed benefits. Both the significant opposition parties in England oppose the scheme. The Information Commissioner (our quasi-independent guardian of data protection and freedom of information issues) has issued some of his most damning comments ever on the subject, and ruled against the government several times on information disclosure issues. The timetables are obviously slipping badly, but no-one will admit how badly. The costs are huge, but no-one will disclose how huge. Sooner or later, the whole illusory stack of cards is going to collapse, and all Tony Blair's big "it's be a centrepiece in our next election manifesto" rhetoric is doing is digging his successor's grave early.
Likewise, a bill described as "Blair's (latest) enabling act" because of its attempt to reduce Parliament to pretty much a rubber stamp was quietly all but dropped a few weeks ago.
The government has been ruled against yet again in the past few days over the whole restraining order/detention without trial thing. This is one of those awkward issues: it's a good bet that a high proportion of the people subject to restraining orders really are nasty bits of work, but I think the principle of freedom from arbitrary detention transcends the importance of removing some liberties from a small number of individuals who may or may not pose some level of threat. It would be far better, if the government really has enough good intelligence to believe these people pose a current threat to our security, that the government should bring charges against them in a suitable court of law and make its case properly. In any case, one of the most senior judges in our land has now said outright that if the Home Secretary wants to impose this sort of thing, he's had ample time to consult Parliament since some of these suspects came to light, and therefore he can't just award himself new powers without scrutiny to do as he sees fit. (This on top of one of the most damning judgements in recent legal history from the High Court during the previous round of the case, which pulled few punches as far as telling the government it was way out of line.)
Personally, I increasingly think this is Gordon Brown setting Tony Blair up to take the fall for al
Re:Not just cybercrime.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I've Had It! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The treaty explicitly allows us to preserve rig (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words you retain your right to free speech as long as the executive wants you to have it.
Re:Clearly a Constitutional Issue (Score:2, Insightful)
You cannot have it both ways.
We are waiting for USA to ratify the extradition treaty under which they extradited the UK folk on, so we in UK can nail over 430 persons in USA who financed terrorism on UK soil.
One world order (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad there are few places you can go to to escape this 'melding' of the worlds governments to the least common denominator.
Between things like this and the WTO, a independent country will no longer h ave any sovereign rights at all.
And before you say anything about being hypocritical, i don't care who's law 'wins', Its wrong. just wrong, even if its mine.
Re:I've Had It! ME TOO! (Score:2, Insightful)
We stopped a war. oh! hell! I've posted this a dozen times on
We did not have the tools you have now. We did not have access to the Freedom of Information Act. We did not have access to instant communications world wide.
You 'write' the programs (code),the software these governments use. They don't create it..you do! Most of them have no clue until you give them the tools to subvert the principles they take away from 'the people',via the stealth methods that the general public is totally unaware of.
Remember T. Square and the ingenuity the common people and students used (old fashioned fax machines) to get the TRUTH out to the world.
The power to replace the checks and balances lays in your hands. Open Source isn't under govt. control. Look how the US govt. fought PGP but they didn't kill it.
I've confesssed in this forum before, to being a 'real' old hippy, (and again, I reiterate: we DID support OUR troops..just not an ilegal war) and I can't do what you all can do. I can only keep believing that you all hold the future of this planet and it's survival (politically and ecologically)in your hands now. I shudder with fear that apathy and greed have over powered 'rightous indignation, and outrage'!
O.K., I'll go back to lurking and keep on hopeing Right is Might and some of you are, indeed, out-thinking and taking back the rights of the people with the same slealth they have used to strip us of our ability to utilize those check and balances we have already lost.
Re:The Nation State.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Government without the power to legislate and/or regulate the markets, cannot be used as a tool of special interests to legislate/regulate in their favor. This is one of the main principles behind libertarianism. If the government doesn't interfere in the marketplace, then it can't give anyone a government-granted advantage.