- White House plans to ratify a Council of Europe Cybercrime
treaty will be a disaster for the privacy and security of Americans, Privacy
International (PI), the human rights watchdog, claims.
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- President Bush this week urged Senators to back the adoption
of the mutual assistance Treaty into US law. The Treaty, designed to streamline
cooperation between signatory countries, will significant expand the power
of investigators to access data and prosecute offences ranging from copyright
infringement to "hate speech".
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- PI warns that if the Senate ratifies the Treaty, "dozens
of countries will have 'on demand' access to the personal information and
communications records of any American they may wish to investigate".
This data - including full email logs, phone records and mobile phone location
data together with account and financial records - could be "cherry
picked" by investigating authorities in countries that ratify the
treaty.
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- Providing the US signs up to the Treaty, the personal
details of millions of US citizens will be available "on demand"
to Balkan and former communist countries, PI says.
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- Safeguards? What safeguards?
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- PI warns that the "low standard of evidence or authentication
demanded for these transfers of personal information creates exceptional
dangers to many ethnic and minority groups in the US".
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- The conditions for sharing this information mean that
intelligence could concern offences which are criminal in the requesting
country, but not in the US. Grounds for refusing to share data are limited.
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- The ratification of the Treaty would make data regarding
US citizens available to governments around the world with little oversight
or control, according to PI. It warns the treaty will "open the floodgates
for overseas government and private bodies" looking for sensitive
personal information.
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- Only very basic information about the purposes of the
data would be given to US officials.
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- Civil liberties organisations have opposed the treaty
from the beginning.
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- In an open letter two years ago, critics argued: "the
convention continues to be a document that threatens the rights of the
individual while extending the powers of police authorities, creates a
low-barrier protection of rights uniformly across borders, and ignores
highly-regarded data protection principles".
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- Simon Davies, PI director, said the Treaty "imperils
the constitutional and judicial protections that Americans enjoy. Ratification
will compromise every safeguard in US law. The Treaty is ill considered,
regressive and unnecessary and should be rejected by the Senate."
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- http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/34105.html
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