[Reader-list] Europe Hacker Laws Could Make Protest a Crime

[Avishek Ganguly]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/international/europe/05BRUS.html?th

March 5, 2003
Europe Hacker Laws Could Make Protest a Crime
By PAUL MELLER

 
RUSSELS, March 4 — The justice ministers of the
European Union have agreed on laws intended to deter
computer hacking and the spreading of computer
viruses. But legal experts say the new measures could
pose problems because the language could also outlaw
people who organize protests online, as happened
recently, en masse, with protests against a war in
Iraq. 

The agreement, reached last week, obliges all 15
member states to adopt a new criminal offense: illegal
access to, and illegal interference with an
information system. It calls on national courts to
impose jail terms of at least two years in serious
cases. 

Critics from the legal profession say the agreement
makes no legal distinction between an online protester
and terrorists, hackers and spreaders of computer
viruses that the new laws are intended to trap. 

Last Wednesday, protesters against a possible war
against Iraq barraged the White House and Senate
offices with tens of thousands of messages by phone,
fax and e-mail, as part of what was billed as the
first-ever "virtual protest march." 

Under the new agreement, if European Union citizens
undertook a similar electronic bombardment of the
e-mail, fax and phone lines of the British prime
minister, Tony Blair, they might be liable for
prosecution, said Leon de Costa, chief executive of
Judicium, a legal consultancy based in London. The new
code "criminalizes behavior which, until now, has been
seen as lawful civil disobedience," Mr. de Costa said.


Ulrich Sieber, a professor of law at Munich
University, urged lawmakers to amend the code to add a
specific reference to the right to free expression as
outlined in the European Union's Charter of
Fundamental Human Rights. 

Marco Cappato, a European Parliament deputy from
Italy, said he failed to persuade the ministers to
insert wording that differentiates between the online
equivalent of trespassing and someone breaking and
entering. The role of the European Parliament is
consultative, so it cannot force changes to the law. 

A European Union diplomat involved in the drafting of
the measures agreed that protection mechanisms in the
code are soft and said that amendments could still be
made.





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