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New Cybercrime Treaty To Open Dangerous Doors Concerning Online Jurisdiction
from the the-long-arm-of-the-law dept
A common theme around here for years has been how questions involving jurisdiction on the internet are mostly ignored by governments leading to inconsistent rulemaking and leaving plenty of questions up in the air -- and, leaving open the very real possibility that people, companies and governments can simply find ways to use the absolute worst laws to prosecute people in other countries. A new "cybercrime treaty" being prepared by the US and a number of other countries appears to make the situation a lot worse. The idea behind the treaty is for authorities in various countries to share data back and forth to help track down cyber criminals. You can understand the reasoning -- since so much cybercrime is international, it would help to have such a treaty to team up to track down the worst offenders. The problem is that the treaty doesn't include "dual criminality" -- which would mean the treaty only covers things that are illegal in both countries. Instead, it will cover things that are illegal in just one country. That means that if someone in the US does something illegal elsewhere, authorities there could use this treaty to track them down in the US. Yes, even if they haven't committed a crime here. That basically sets the worst of the jurisdictional setups into law.
Reader Comments
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Not in the US
This will never happen, not in the current political climate of the US. While our law enforcement relishes at the idea, our leaders are not going to allow other countries to openly track and monitor US citizens for what THEY consider cyber crimes in their countries.
It's the same reason the US renounced the war crimes treaty in 2002. Picture how many countries would love to prosecute US presidents for whatever THEY deem a crime?
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Re: Not in the US
Our leaders will do whatever increases their own standing and power. Keep in mind that the people highest up on the chain did not want to be held accountable to the War Crimes treaty, lowly peon citizens are of no concern. My middle class world is unimportant to washington unless they somehow overlap.
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Re: Not in the US
This will never happen, not in the current political climate of the US. While our law enforcement relishes at the idea, our leaders are not going to allow other countries to openly track and monitor US citizens for what THEY consider cyber crimes in their countries.
The article indicates otherwise... It says that US politicians have rejected adding language to make this clear, complaining that it would make the treaty too "rigid."
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Re: Not in the US
I thought it was the US that was initiating this? I can see that cause you just know that the US legislation wants to go after spammers and piraters overseas, notably in places where there aren't current laws against those things.
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Dead cows
For some reason, when reading this I just immediately thought of a US based website showing pictures of slaughtered cows and the Indian government attempting to come into US lands to arrest them.
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Are you kidding?
If the crime is big enough that they would spend the time and manpower to come to the US to arrest someone, I say the person is getting what they deserve. I doubt they are going to come after teh idiot that accidentally sells a product that is not supposed to be imported, like an Ipod or something. They aren't going to waste thousands for a single misdimeanor. They are going to go after the pedophiles and drug dealers and kiddy porn rings.
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