Cybercrime Treaty Ratified

This doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

"While balancing civil liberty and privacy concerns, this treaty encourages the sharing of critical electronic evidence among foreign countries so that law enforcement can more effectively investigate and combat these crimes," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. The convention targets hackers, those spreading destructive computer viruses, those using the Internet for the sexual exploitation of children or the distribution of racist material and terrorists attempting to attack infrastructure facilities or financial institutions. "This treaty provides important tools in the battles against terrorism, attacks on computer networks, and the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet, by strengthening U.S. cooperation with foreign countries in obtaining electronic evidence," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said. "The Convention is in full accord with all U.S. constitutional protections, such as free speech and other civil liberties, and will require no change to U.S. laws."

Politicians making these statements usually worry me. This is a bit too convenient. Of course, I've found an article that gives a totally different picture.

Countries that sign the treaty agree to establish some common laws against criminal behavior online, such as attacks on computer networks, terrorist tactics, and exploitation of children. The language of the treaty is very broad and doesn't require the U.S. to write any new cybercrime laws.

However, by signing the treaty, the U.S. will now be bound to aid its partner countries in the investigation of cybercrime, even if the alleged perpetrators have not violated any U.S. statute, critics say. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) both called the treaty the "world's worst Internet law."

"Countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the FBI to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments," the EFF said. "American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdictions' requests to log their users' behavior without due process, or compensation.

"However, Council of Europe documentation on the treaty suggests that the EFF may be oversimplifying the treaty's position on ISPs. "Service providers are obligated only to preserve (i.e., not delete or disclose) data that they are currently storing, if requested to do so by law enforcement with respect to specified data in a particular case," the Council says. ISPs aren't required to retain or disclose data not needed for business purposes, it says.

Why is it that when someone says another group is oversimplifying, I start to wonder why that probably isn't true? Paranoia obviously. These treaties always cause concern when they are overly broad in scope. The US tries to be controlled and narrow in it's interpretation, and then gets the shaft when the international courts decide that the US is being too narrow.

I'm also concerned that I've found no other article that discusses the ACLU or EFF concern. That is quite troubling.