[6992] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Planned Net-treaty limits privacy, may compel key disclosure
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Wed May 3 10:16:12 2000
Message-Id: <4.3.0.20000503090940.020aa010@mail.well.com>
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 09:09:43 -0400
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
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The document:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/treaty.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36047,00.html
Cyber-treaty Goes Too Far?
by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
3:00 a.m. May. 3, 2000 PDT
WASHINGTON -- U.S. and European police agencies will receive new
powers to investigate and prosecute computer crimes, according to a
preliminary draft of a treaty being circulated among over 40 nations.
The Council of Europe's 65KB proposal is designed to aid police in
investigations of online miscreants in cases where attacks or
intrusions cross national borders.
But the details of the "Draft Convention on Cybercrime" worry U.S.
civil libertarians. They warn that the plan would violate longstanding
privacy rights and grant the government far too much power.
The proposal, which is expected to be finalized by December 2000 and
appears to be the first computer crime treaty, would:
* Make it a crime to create, download, or post on a website any
computer program that is "designed or adapted" primarily to gain
access to a computer system without permission. Also banned is
software designed to interfere with the "functioning of a computer
system" by deleting or altering data.
* Allow authorities to order someone to reveal his or her passphrase
for an encryption key. According to a recent survey, only Singapore
and Malaysia have enacted such a requirement into law, and experts say
that in the United States it could run afoul of constitutional
protections against self-incrimination.
* Internationalize a U.S. law that makes it a crime to possess even
digital images that "appear" to represent children's genitals or
children engaged in sexual conduct. Linking to such a site also would
be a crime.
* Require websites and Internet providers to collect information about
their users, a rule that would potentially limit anonymous remailers.
[...]
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