Rights Groups Press Council Of Europe On Cybercrime Treaty



By Brian Krebs, Newsbytes
WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A.,
01 Mar 2002, 5:01 PM CST



More than 30 privacy and civil liberties groups are urging the Council of Europe to turn over information about a new protocol to the global cybercrime treaty on terrorist e-mail messages.






In a letter to Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer, members of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign demanded the release of documents related to the insertion of a new protocol on the decoding of terrorist messages” to the cybercrime treaty signed by more than 30 nations last November.

"Given the potentially serious ramifications of the proposed second protocol and related work of the CoE, we believe its draft text must be disclosed to allow vigorous and wide-ranging debate over its merits," the group wrote.

The convention streamlines definitions and civil and criminal penalties for hacking, copyright infringement, computer-related fraud and child pornography.

The treaty also includes provisions added in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that give member states common powers to search and intercept the Internet communications of suspected terrorists.

The COE is debating whether to include the new language on terrorist communications in a supplemental protocol that will soon be added to the agreement that makes any Internet publication of racist or xenophobic material a criminal offense.

The convention will become binding when at least five member nations have ratified it. Civil liberties and First Amendment groups already are concerned that the supplemental protocol could force the U.S. government to assist nations in prosecuting suspects for actions that are not crimes in the United States.

U.S. signers to the GILC letter included the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Human Rights Watch and Privacy International, among others.

The GILC letter is online at  http://www.gilc.org/speech/coe_hatespeech_2.html .

Reported by Newsbytes.com,  http://www.newsbytes.com .

17:01 CST

(20020301/WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS, TELECOM/)


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