Bush pushes for cybercrime treaty (United Nations)

President Bush has asked the U.S. Senate to ratify the first international cybercrime treaty.

In a letter to the Senate on Monday, Bush called the Council of Europe's controversial treaty "an effective tool in the global effort to combat computer-related crime" and "the only multilateral treaty to address the problems of computer-related crime and electronic evidence gathering."

Even though the United States is a nonvoting member of the Council of Europe, it has pressed hard for the cybercrime treaty as a way to establish international criminal standards related to copyright infringement, online fraud, child pornography and network intrusions. The U.S. Department of Justice says the treaty will eliminate "procedural and jurisdictional obstacles that can delay or endanger international investigations."

Civil libertarians have objected to the treaty ever since it became public in early 2000, arguing that it would endanger privacy rights and grant too much power to government investigators. So have industry groups such as Americans for Computer Privacy and the Internet Alliance. They raised concerns that the treaty could limit anonymity or impose vague record-keeping requirements on U.S. Internet providers.

"It's a treaty that goes way beyond combating cybercrime," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program. "It would require nations that participate in the treaty to adopt all sorts of intrusive surveillance measures and cooperate with other nations, even when the act that's being investigated is not a crime in their home country."

So far, according to the Council of Europe, only three countries--Albania, Croatia and Estonia--have ratified the treaty. If the Senate approves it, the Bush administration said it believes that because U.S. law already abides by provisions in the treaty, no further legal changes would be necessary.

The treaty requires each participating nation to ban the distribution of software that is designed for the "purpose of committing" certain computer crimes, requires Internet providers to ensure "expeditious preservation of traffic data" upon request, and permits real-time wiretapping of Internet service providers. It also covers extradition for computer crimes and permits police to request that their counterparts in other countries cooperate in conducting electronic surveillance.

Bush said the treaty will "help deny 'safe havens' to criminals, including terrorists, who can cause damage to U.S. interests from abroad, using computer systems."

An addition to the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty would ban "hate speech" from the Internet, a common prohibition in European nations that violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. The Justice Department said last year that it does not support the optional addition but still endorses the underlying treaty.

The addition covers "distributing, or otherwise making available, racist and xenophobic material to the public through a computer system." This is defined as "any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion."

A mysterious second addition to the treaty discussed soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks would have covered "how to identify, how to filter, and how to trace communications between terrorists." At the time, the Council of Europe confirmed that the proposal existed but it did not become part of the final treaty.

Europe hopes to outlaw hate speech online

By Wendy McAuliffe

The Council of Europe is pressing ahead with a protocol to criminalize hate speech on the Internet.

After the Cybercrime Convention--the world's first international treaty on cybercrime--was approved Thursday, the Standing Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly voted unanimously to back it with a protocol that defines and outlaws hate speech on computer networks.

Publishing material likely to incite racial hatred is already illegal in the United Kingdom under the Public Order Act 1986, but there is nothing that can be done under U.K. law if the company's servers are located in another country, such as the United States. To date, there have been no successful prosecutions for race hate material appearing on the Net, so there is no case law to suggest what is illegal in the United Kingdom.

"It is difficult to apply the U.K. Public Order Act to online content--there is a lack of clear precedents relating to offline content that we would need to make a judgment about anything being illegal online," said David Kerr, chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation. "There are no consistent laws around the world for overseas content--the U.S. in particular is safeguarded by the First Amendment."

Drafters of the European protocol have been advised to consider ways of preventing "illegal hosting," where servers are located in a country with more lenient laws. Racist organizations, for example, could place their servers in the United States and hide behind the protection of the First Amendment.

Racial hatred has taken a backseat in the political agenda in the past, but the Council of Europe's approval of the Cybercrime Convention--which was drawn up with the participation of non-European countries such as the United States and Canada--signifies a new commitment to cracking down on online racist content. A recent report estimates that at present there are around 4,000 racist Web sites, including 2,500 in the United States.

"The 11 September has shown that hate speech can become an action of horrendous magnitude," said Ivor Tallo from the Estonia Socialist Group, which authored the report. "Therefore, modern technology has to have safeguards, and one of those is to ban hate speech on the Internet."

The European Commission also recently emphasized the need to control racist content online, handing $5.37 million (6 million euros) to an Internet safety project. The funding will form the final part of the Safer Internet Action Plan, originally set up to tackle illegal and racist content on the Internet.

The new money is designated for an awareness campaign promoting the dangers of children using Internet chat rooms. A portion of the money will also be used to set up hotlines across Europe that let people report harmful content encountered on the Internet. For the next couple of months, the EC will be accepting bids for funding from European nongovernmental organizations wishing to promote awareness of safer Internet use.

Well, so far, Dubya has managed to seriously erode the 4th Amendment, with the (ANTI)Patriot Act and ignored the 6th Amendment, by holding non-combatant US citizen, Jose Padilla, for over a year, without access to an attorney or even a court hearing.

I wondered what would be next. Well, now the wait is over. Supporting this treaty gives him a way to shred the 1st Amendment. He is using the fact that the Court has ruled that treaties with other nations overrule the Constitution of the United States (I disagree, but that is not at issue here). Since this treaty would require all participants to outlaw so-called "hate speech", the US would be required to deny 1st Amendment rights to anyone whose ideas might insight hatred.

The treaty gives examples of what "hate speech" might be, but determination of what is "hate speech", is left up to the governments. If the US becomes party to this treaty, then Dubya (or his successor) might determine that any speech that is derogatory to the President, such as pointing out that his actions violate the Constitution (as has Dubya's), might incite hatred and is therefore banned.

R.I.P.
First Amendment

How can one President be both so good and at the same time, be so unquestionably bad?

It's time for GOP voters to replace Dubya with a real CONSTITUTIONAL Republican President (or third party, if necessary).

Annan calls for expanded laws against environmental damage in war
6 November – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called today for tougher international laws to protect the environment in times of armed conflict.

In a message to mark the observance of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict, the Secretary-General said, "I urge the international community to examine how legal and other mechanisms can be strengthened to encourage environmental protection in wartime.

"Ensuring environmental sustainability is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite for the future peace and prosperity of our planet."

The instances in which the environment was deliberately targeted have been relatively few, he said, but too many grey areas remained where more care should be exercised to protect the environmental base on which sustainable development and recovery from conflict largely depended.

The Geneva Conventions and Protocols and other international laws had discouraged the worst excesses of armed conflict, including targeting civilians, mistreating prisoners of war, and destroying sensitive infrastructure, such as large dams and nuclear power stations, he said.

The increasingly devastating potential of modern warfare showed, however, that existing international laws have not fully addressed environmental dangers, such as the indiscriminate use of landmines, the ecological destruction caused by mass movements of refugees and the potential devastation threatened by weapons of mass destruction, he said.

Klaus Toepfer, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi, Kenya, said two international agreements cover some ground.

Article 35 of the 1977 Geneva Protocol I bans "methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment," he said.

The 1976 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) was designed to tackle new, environmentally unfriendly technologies for waging war.

"But most legal experts have concluded that these and others fall far short of what is ideal and what is needed," Mr. Toepfer said.

In a new report commissioned by the German Environment Ministry, Daniel Bodansky of the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia, United States, argued that the requirement to prove "widespread, long-term and severe damage" rendered the Geneva Protocol I ineffective for environmental protection, the UNEP chief noted.

"The Protocol also appears silent on the issue of long-term risk, of the so-called 'precautionary approach', which guides many of our modern environmental treaties, covering everything from the ozone layer to climate change," Mr. Toepfer said.

Twenty or so years down the road, some of the pollution arising from recent theatres of war might prove to be a long-term environmental and public health hazard, he said, but the Protocol applied to expected damage, rather than possible hazards.

"Should striking an oil tanker sailing near a coral reef be deemed unacceptable, or a legitimate act of war? Does the crippling of an enemy's oil supplies justify the killing of an ecosystem upon which hundreds, maybe thousands, of the poor rely for food in the form of fish?" he asked.

Among the historical examples of environmental damage in war, he recalled, the Scythians scorched the earth to slow the advancing Persians, the Romans salted the land around Carthage to make it infertile and the Turks depleted Lebanon's forests to run railways.

The UNEP chief also reminded the international community that the United States used chemical defoliants on Viet Nam, Iraqis sabotaged oil installations and the Congolese, Rwandans and Sudanese killed scarce wild animals to raise funds for armies.

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