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.
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Not in the US
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
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Re: Not in the US
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
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Dead cows
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Are you kidding?
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