European Cybercrime treaty

violating civil rights?

[heini]

After the 11/9 attacks it became immeadiately obvious that the freedom of the internet would have to defend itself against all kinds of regulations. Now the European Committee of Ministers has adopted a treaty, prepared by the European Council, that aims at regulating internet usage across Europe. Represented by this committee are more than 40 European countries.
The treaty provides foundations for the members to be incorporated in their countries law.
Main points of interest here are:
- the prosecutional right to monitor internet traffic/e-mail in real time
- an obligation for provider to store traffic data and opneing those data up to authorities on request, which can be based on sheer suspicion

While most of the treaty deals with cross country adaption of legislation on racist and po*nographic content, on illegal attacks on computer systems, stealing and manipulating data, there are two areas involved, which have lead to heated discussions.
One is the councilīs take on copyright questions. Itīs complicated and would need a discussion on itīs own, but basically itīs said to be very much in the interest of Bertelsmann and other Media Companies.

The most critical point however regards the extensive right of states. The suspicion alone of a violation against the afore mentioned points is enough for prosecutors to intercept internet communication, to confiscate computers, stored data, private encrytion keys. This is possible over country borders. Taken to an extreme: if a French authority supects a user in Italy to violate against the copyright, it can lead to confiscating his PC!

Many critics of this new treaty claim that this violates civil rights. Points are made regarding fundamental privacy, free speech, and the fundamental legal principle saying a suspect cannot be forced to testyfy against himself. Interestingly enough this protest does not only come from political groups but from business organizations also.

Basically it seems that the September attacks are utilized to push a regulation that abolishes some fundamental civil rights in the European internet.
The US, Japan and Canada were present as observers to the treaty, they are invited to adopt the regulation too.