US Senate approval of Council of Europe Cybercrime

I have been following the news about US Senate approval of Council of Europe Cybercrime Treaty. It is a milestone in both Internet law enforcement and Internet Governance. The most comprehensive article about this development was by ZDnet Asia

There are a lot of Bloggers discussing how Americans is affected by this Cybercrime Treaty. From this blogs, I found most negative comments are worries out of ignorance. Their comments do not quote or make reference to the Treaty, most of the time are just suspicions.

Treaty Article 19 – Search and seizure of stored computer data, US government may establish new provisions to seize individual data. But there are already lots of other American laws giving US government the right to do so. The Treaty only specifies the principles and each country is required to implement their own procedures.

Below are some comments from the Blogsphere :


  1. entirely symbolic
  2. expand Big Government powers
  3. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdictions' requests
  4. to obtain assistance from other countries in the investigation

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