Senate Considers Cybercrime Treaty
by undermyspell - Adult Grind

There is currently a treaty that is winding it's way through the ratification process in the United States Senate. This treaty would require participating nations to update their laws to reflect computer crimes such as unauthorized intrusions into networks, the release of worms and viruses, and copyright infringement. It also in includes a section that would require nations to imprison anyone guilty of "insulting publicly, through a computer system" certain groups of people based on characteristics such as race or ethnic origin, a requirement that could make it a crime to participate in something as seemingly harmless as mailing jokes to family and friends that have what could be considered racial or ethnic slurs in them. Often times we don't realize that something said innocently is a slur. How many times as a kid did you tell a Polak joke and how often as an adult have we told a joke referring to a dumb blonde? Both of these instances would break the rules set forth in the treaty and could leave you on the receiving end of a severe punishment.

The United States is not considering the portion of the treaty dealing with public insults but is supported by the Bush administration and is expected to be passed into law. The Justice Department advised the Senate that to pass the treaty with the "public insults" section in it would be in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution because of the First Amendment's guarantee of Freedom of Speech. However, this is not an issue with other countries that are considering the treaty and the other nations are expected to ratify the treaty as it is originally written. Thus far it has been ratified by: Albania, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania and Romania.

The item within this treaty that is of most concern is the arrangement for mutual assistance and extradition among participating nations. The United States is excluding the portion of the treaty dealing with publicly insulting another party, however, should a United States citizen commit an act that is considered publicly humiliating against a person or entity from a nation that has ratified the treaty in it's entirety, how will that be handled? The answer has been written into the treaty as thus: When an offense is committed a violator may be extradited only if the crime is punishable under both jurisdictions by more than one year imprisonment.

This is actually going to be a very good thing for people that work within the online industry. Often times companies take their businesses to another country or off shore to prevent any type of legal actions taken against them should they commit fraud. By having this treaty ratified by several nations it will reduce the number of locations that criminal activity can move to. Of course, this treaty has been in the proposal stage for approximately three years now and has only been ratified by 6 nations to date. There are still another 32 nations that it has been proposed to that have failed to ratify it.

Another concern of this treaty will be the amount of privacy invasion that the citizens of the nations employing this treaty will have to undergo. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has stepped in and written a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations addressing the concerns they have regarding the lack of privacy protection. Time will tell whether the Senate chooses to listen to the EPIC or chooses to ratify the treaty.

Jan "undermyspell" Grady
Editor in Chief - Adult Grind