IT assignment help on: Cyber crime treaty

Cyber crime treaty: The U.S. is one of 38 nations that have signed onto the Council of Europe’s “Convention on Cybercrime,” but the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified the measure. In a letter to the Senate last November, President Bush called the pact “the only multilateral treaty to address the problems of computer-related crime and electronic evidence gathering.” The treaty, “would remove or minimize legal obstacles to international cooperation that delay or endanger U.S. investigations and prosecutions of computer-related crime,” said Bush.Drafted under strong U.S. influence, the treaty aims to harmonize computer crime laws around the world by obliging participating countries to outlaw computer intrusion, child pornography, commercial copyright infringement, and online fraud.

Another portion of the treaty requires each country to pass laws that permit the government to search and seize e-mail and computer records, perform Internet surveillance, and to order ISPs to preserve logs in connection with an investigation. A “mutual assistance” provision then obligates the country to use those tools to help out other signatory countries in cross-border investigations: France, for example, could request from the U.S. the traffic logs for an anonymous Hotmail user suspected of violating French law.As part of an emerging international trend to try to ‘civilize the Internet’, one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties–the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime–is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention’s intended levels of intrusiveness. Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Moreover, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom are amongst those who have ratified within the last year. However, among non-European countries, only the U.S. has ratified the Treaty to date, making Canada and Australia’s efforts unique. The Treaty has not been harmless, and both Australia and Canada are fast-tracking legislation (Australia’s lower house approved a cybercrime bill last night) that will enable them to ratify the Treaty, at great cost to the civil liberties of their citizens.

Australia’s invasive bill highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the Convention on Cybercrime: the Treaty’s failure to specify proper level of privacy protection necessary to limit the over-broad surveillance powers it grants law enforcement agencies. This creates problems in countries like Australia since, as the Australia Privacy Foundation points out, Australia lacks the legal constitutional safeguards afforded to many other democratic countries:    The CoE Convention has to be read within the context that applies in CoE countries – where there are substantial and actionable constitutional protections for human rights. The absence of any such countervailing protection for human rights in Australia makes it completely untenable for the Convention to be implemented in Australia without very substantial additional provisions that achieve a comparable balance.

Bills proposed in Canada (read here and here) are also affected by the Convention’s flaws as they adopt the lowest possible standard of protection against many of the invasive powers they grant. The bills provide law enforcement access to sensitive data on the mere suspicion it might be useful to an investigation. Indeed, at times they leave out the safeguards altogether, as noted in a letter from Canadian privacy scholars and civil society organizations.

Australian ISPs are happy to retain personal subscriber data for up to a year as part of government efforts to bring its cybercrime laws inline with international standards.

 Operators and ISPs have reportedly already approved legislative changes considered necessary to introduce the Council of Europe’s Prevention of Cybercrime treaty.

 Attorney general Robert McClelland revealed that legal changes would be required in a consultation document released late last week, because the global treaty is designed to make it easier for foreign authorities to access online user information. Telcos and ISPs have already agreed to comply with the proposed new regime, the Australian reported.

 McClelland admits that data gathered from sources including e-mail surveillance and call interception would likely be held far longer than the 90 days specified by the treaty – possibly for up to a year, ZDNet Australia said.

The treaty already has the participation of 45 member nations, including non-European countries such as Japan, the US and Canada.

It aims to make international enforcement of internet-related offenses – including fraud, child pornography and international copyright violation – easier to pursue.

 While some European nations want to increase the minimum term for data retention to five years, McClelland said Australia and the US consider that to be excessive.

The Council of Europe’s controversial Convention on Cybercrime, which US-based digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontiers Foundation described as a door to enforcing “the world’s worst internet laws” when the United States ratified the treaty in mid-2006.The Federal Government on Friday announced it would accede to the Council of Europe’s controversial Convention on Cybercrime, which US-based digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontiers Foundation described as a door to enforcing “the world’s worst internet laws” when the United States ratified the treaty in mid-2006.

The convention, which entered into force in July 2004, attempts to harmonise national laws on cybercrime and provides for countries to cooperate on enforcement. Over 40 nations have signed or become a party to the agreement, including the US, Canada, Japan and South Africa.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith announced Australia’s intention to accede to the agreement in a statement on Friday.

“Cybercrime poses a significant challenge for our law enforcement and criminal justice system. The Internet makes it easy for criminals to operate from abroad, especially from those countries where regulations and enforcement arrangements are weak,” the statement read. “It is critical that laws designed to combat cybercrime are harmonised, or at least compatible to allow for cooperation internationally.”

The pair’s statement noted the agreement required countries to criminalise four types of offences. These are broadly:

    * Offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems (such as illegal access or the misuse of devices)    * Computer-related offences such as forgery and fraud

    * Content-related offences, including child pornography

    * Copyright infringement offences

They also noted the convention established procedures to make investigations more efficient, including facilitating international cooperation around areas such as helping authorities from one country to collect data in another, empowering authorities to request the disclosure of specific computer data, allowing authorities to collect traffic data in real-time and establishing a 24/7 network to provide help to investigators.

The Government’s statement did not include details of when Australia would sign the treaty or what changes would be required to Australian law to do so, although iTnews has reported that some laws would have to be changed.

The convention has not been accepted internationally without controversy over the years.

For example, when the US Senate ratified it in mid-2006, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the treaty required the US 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 FBI 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 jurisdiction’s requests to log their users’ behavior without due process, or compensation,” wrote the EFF at the time.“Ratifying the Cybercrime treaty would introduce not just one bad Internet law into America’s lawbooks, but invite the enforcement of all the world’s worst Internet laws. Call your senators now, and tell them to hold this invasive treaty at bay,” the EFF advocated.

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