IP: Global Internet Liberty Campaign Member Letter on Council of Europe Convention on Cyber-Crime

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://www.gilc.org/privacy/coe-letter-1000.html

October 18, 2000

Dear Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer and COE Committee 
of Experts on Cyber Crime,

We write to you on behalf of a wide range of civil society organizations 
from around the world to object to the proposed Convention on Cyber-Crime. 
We believe that the draft treaty is contrary to well established norms for 
the protection of the individual, that it improperly extends the police 
authority of national governments, that it will undermine the development 
of network security techniques, and that it will reduce government 
accountability in future law enforcement conduct.
Specifically, we object to provisions that will require Internet Service 
Providers to retain records regarding the activities of their customers. 
(Articles 17, 18, 24, 25). These provisions pose a significant risk to the 
privacy and human rights of Internet users and are at odds with well 
established principles of data protection such as the Data Protection 
Directive of the European Union. Similar communications transaction 
information has been used in the past to identify dissidents and to 
persecute minorities. We urge you not to establish this requirement in a 
modern communication network. In our view the whole of Article 18 is 
incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR and with the jurisprudence of the 
European Court of Human Rights.

We further object to the conception of "Illegal Devices" set out in Article 
6. We believe that this concept lacks sufficient specificity to ensure that 
it will not become an all-purpose basis to investigate individuals engaged 
in computer-related activity that is completely lawful. As technical 
experts have made clear, this provision will also discourage the 
development of new security tools and give government an improper role in 
policing scientific innovation.

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