[Reader-list] European Treaty on Cybercrime

[Monica Narula]

Following is a pretty fluffy write-up on the European Treaty on cyber 
crime gleaned from the hallowed pages of the Observer. But worth 
reading in the context of the recent discussion on what governments 
are feeling impelled to do to their citizenry.

cheers
Monica
***********************
Cybercrime treaty's a secret policemen's ball
The Networker: John Naughton

Is the net a genuinely subversive technology? The honest answer is 
that we don't know yet. Early signs were promising. Email and the Web 
enabled new and less restricted forms of communication and 
publishing. Thomas Paine's dream of a society in which everyone could 
have their say seemed about to be realised. The traditional 
gatekeepers of opinion could be sidestepped or marginalised. 
Communities of activists could be organised and co-ordinated via the 
net. Governments suddenly found it impossible to keep secrets. Even 
authoritarian regimes struggled to control the flow of information 
across their frontiers. It was a libertarian dream come true.

But freedom is indivisible, and the open, unregulated nature of 
cyberspace offered opportunities not just to decent folks like you 
and me but also to unsavoury characters- money-launderers, tax 
dodgers, pornographers, paedophiles, hackers, virus-writers, 
terrorists and the like.

The net represented two different kinds of menace to the established 
order. It facilitated freedom of expression, increased the flow of 
ideas and information and generally made it more difficult for 
governments to control the public agenda. But it also provided 
unprecedented opportunities for the aforementioned hoodlums and thus 
a challenge to law enforcement and tax collection, not to mention 
'national security'.

From the outset, therefore, it was clear to the established order 
that this unruly medium would have to be brought under control. But 
this raised a tricky problem: citizens rather like the net- so much 
that they took to it in megadroves. The business world also took to 
the net, as the marketplace of the future. So democratic governments 
have had to tread war- ily when trying to bring the net back under 
(their) control. The lessons of Prohibition - when the US government 
tried to stamp out another activity popular with the citizenry - 
loomed large in policymakers' minds. If their repressive goals were 
to be achieved, some persuasive rationale had to be invented for 
circumscribing internet users' new-found freedoms.

This is where the dark side of the net comes in handy. If you are 
(say) a Home Secretary who seeks draconian powers to control the net, 
your best strategy is to scare the citizenry by exaggerating the 
risks from criminals and paedophiles to justify those powers. Since 
nobody knows the extent of criminal use of the network, you are 
unlikely to be challenged on empirical grounds. Blunt assertions from 
policemen and spooks are all you need. This was how the Regulation of 
Investigatory Powers Act was pushed through - giving Ml5 access to 
every digital packet flowing through a British ISP's servers.

Unsubstantiated assertions about online crime are also the basis for 
a much more sweeping curtailment of civil liberties now in the 
legislative pipeline - the European Treaty on Cybercrime. It reads 
like a secret policeman's wish list. Among other things, it gives 
sweeping powers to security services to monitor everything people do 
online, and it places incredible burdens on ISPs. It was cooked up 
behind closed doors at the Council of Europe and will be approved by 
the end of this year, no matter who wins the election. And I'm 
willing to bet there won't be a word about it in any party manifesto.

John.Naughton at observer.co.uk
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
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