[FYI] (Fwd) [NEWS] BBC on COE Treaty

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:15:00 -0400
From:           	Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org>
Subject:        	[NEWS] BBC on COE Treaty
To:             	gilc-plan@gilc.org
Send reply to:  	gilc-plan@gilc.org

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1378000/1378482.stm

Monday, June 11, 2001

Treaty 'could stifle online privacy'

The Council of Europe will soon be debating the cybercrime treaty

By BBC News Online technology correspondent Mark Ward

Changes to a controversial treaty on cybercrime have done nothing to
improve it, say civil liberty campaigners.

Next week, the Council of Europe will vote on the treaty, which has
been redrafted 26 times before reaching its final version late in May.

The most recent changes were made to take into account the fears of
civil liberty and privacy campaigners. But cyber-rights groups say the
latest changes are purely cosmetic and have not diluted what they
describe as its most pernicious sections.

The groups say that, if adopted in its current form, the treaty
could lead to changes in legislation that would stifle rights to
privacy and do little to curb the activities of law enforcement
agencies.

Cosmetic change?

In 1997, the 41-nation Council of Europe started work on a
cybercrime convention to provide a starting point for countries
drafting laws covering malicious hacking, writing and spreading
computer viruses, the online dissemination of child pornography and
fraud.

In December 2000, 23 organisations, banding together under the
banner of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), signed a
letter condemning the 25th draft of the treaty as "appalling", and
warned that it handed law enforcement agencies sweeping powers to
snoop and could seriously erode online privacy.

Now, three civil liberty groups, the American Civil Liberties Union,
the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International,
have sent another letter to the Council of Europe outlining their
"continuing concerns" over the wording of the treaty and saying that
their fears have not been laid to rest.

The letter chastises the Council of Europe for refusing to open up the
redrafting debates to non-governmental organisations and for, it says,
ignoring the human rights and privacy concerns of organisations such
as the GILC.

It goes on to say that the original criticisms still stand, and that
the treaty does not pay enough attention to existing laws which
safeguard human rights. It says the treaty's recommendations on
protecting privacy are vague and do not go far enough.

Lobbying and legislating

The campaigners want more separation between the agencies requesting
permission to carry out surveillance, such as police forces, and those
that give them permission. Without these checks in place, the lobby
groups fear the powers could be abused.

At the same time that the Council of Europe has been drafting its
treaty, the G8 group has been debating a similar convention.

But the G8 invited technology companies and the American Civil
Liberties Union to participate in its debate, which led to the
throwing out of proposals to make net service providers keep records
of what users were up to.

The lobby groups fear that without such informed comment many
Council of Europe governments may take the adoption of the treaty as a
prompt to enact legislation that could erode human rights and online
privacy.

David Banisar, deputy director of Privacy International, said those
countries adopting the treaty might frame laws similar to Britain's
controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

The RIP Act makes it easier for police to carry out surveillance and
puts in place harsh penalties for those unwilling to hand over their
encryption keys.

"When the council of the EU and Council of Europe get together to
draft these treaties, they are bypassing democratic processes," he
said.



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