[Politech] Privacy villain of the week: Sen. Richard Lugar [priv]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Mon Jul 26 2004 - 21:41:47 PDT


Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/2004/06/28/cybercrime-treaty/


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Privacy Villain: Sen. Lugar's cybercrimes
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 19:52:39 -0400
From: J Plummer <jplummer@private>
To: info@private


Privacy Villain of the Week:
Sen. Richard Lugar

by James Plummer

As perhaps the Senate's leading internationalist, Senate Foreign Relations
Chairman Richard Lugar has been keeping busy this summer by holding
hearings on a number of treaties he apparently wishes the Senate to ratify.
One of those is a horrible assault on the privacy of US citizens and
consumers called the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
<http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/185.htm>

Senator Lugar claimed last month, in his opening statement at a hearing on
this Cybercrime Convention, that "Prompt ratification. . . will help
advance the security of Americans." That is not necessarily the case when
one considers that the treaty could allow European agents to spy on
innocent Americans.
<>http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2004/LugarStatement040617.pdf

As the ACLU explains, the treaty "would expand police powers and require
American authorities to conduct surveillance on individuals whose actions
violate the laws of foreign countries but not US law... the Council on
Europe's International Cybercrime Treaty was ostensibly created to help
protect against cybercrime, but is drafted so broadly that it will affect
far more than a few hackers."
<http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14489>

But despite these concerns, Lugar put on a hearing for the treaty that Free
Congress Foundation characterized as a "cheerleading session." One of the
parties not invited to testify, the Electronic Privacy Information Center
(EPIC), sent a letter to Lugar and ranking Democrat Sen. Biden, outlining
their concerns. <http://www.epic.org/privacy/intl/senateletter-061704.pdf>

EPIC's first concern is the treaty's lack of privacy protections: "A
significant number of provisions grant sweeping investigative powers of
computer search and seizure and government surveillance of voice, e-mail,
and data communications in the interests of law enforcement agencies, but
are not counterbalanced by accompanying protections of individual rights or
limits on governments' use of these powers."

Article 14 of the Treaty requires that "Each Party shall adopt such
legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish the powers
and procedures provided for in this section for the purpose of specific
criminal investigations or proceedings... [including] collection of
evidence in electronic form."

Thus, in their letter to Lugar, EPIC points out that language in the treaty
can be read as requiring countries to "enact legislation compelling
individuals to disclose their decryption keys in order to allow for law
enforcement access to computer data."

EPIC also points out in the letter that Article 25 of the Treaty lacks a
"dual-criminality" provision under which activity must be considered
criminal in both countries before one country can demand the citizens of
the other be spied upon. Why didn't Lugar invite someone from EPIC to
highlight this issue at his hearing?

Maybe because that kind of controversy at the hearing may have made it
easier for Lugar's Republican base to draw the kind of conclusions and pose
the kind of obvious, troubling questions asked by Free Congress Foundation:

This Treaty should be of great concern to pro-family organizations,
particularly given the interest that Europeans have in prosecuting
so-called "hate" crimes and the fact that virtually all political
organizations use the Internet. … Is it possible that a government such as
Sudan might try to use a friendly signatory country to obtain information
based on e-mail communications about refugees actively opposed to the
government's persecution of Christian minorities?
<http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_9447.shtml>

And of course, Americans of all political stripes who seek to help refugees
or dissidents could find themselves targeted by foreign governments at some
future date, since other countries will be able to sign on to this
agreement after the initial round of European ratification.

Americans should not LOSE constitutional Protections and become subject to
extraConstitutional foreign laws just because they purchase and use
Internet connection services. For ignoring these pressing issues of great
concern to American Internet users and working to push through this
dangerous treaty, internationalist cheerleader Sen. Richard Lugar is the
Privacy Villain this week.

The Privacy Villain of the Week and Privacy Hero of the Month are projects
of the National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group. Privacy Villain audio
features now available from <http://www.fcfnews.com/>FCF News on Demand.
For more information on the NCC Privacy Group, see www.nccprivacy.org or
contact James Plummer at 202-467-5809 or
<mailto:jplummer@private>via email.  This essay is available
online with more hyperlinks at
<http://www.nccprivacy.org/handv/040723villain.htm>


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