- I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The most
dangerous time of the year for America is right before a congressional
recess, and it matters not whether the Republican Party or the Democratic
Party is in charge.
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- Congress is now in its August recess, and at least the
damage it can visit on the American people is on hold. Unfortunately, right
before it took its latest break, the Senate adopted by voice vote a treaty
that will stand as a tribute to Big Government and internationalism - the
Cybercrime Treaty.
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- This treaty, drafted not by U.S. government lawyers
possessed of at least a passing familiarity with our Bill of Rights, but
by internationalists with the Council of Europe, had been awaiting Senate
ratification since 2001. The Bush administration, long enamored of any
instrument granting the federal government broader or expanded power to
gather information on citizens, for years had been urging Republican Senate
leaders - particularly Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar
(R-Ind.) and Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) - to bring the document
up for a vote. Thanks largely to opposition by a broad coalition of conservative
organizations and other groups focused on privacy issues, however, the
treaty languished.
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- Unfortunately, just last week before senators careened
out of town for another recess - and despite having subjected this far-reaching
treaty to but a single cursory hearing in June 2004 - Republican leaders
succeeded in accomplishing the administration's directive and passed the
treaty by voice vote, with virtually no substantive debate. U.S. Sen. Larry
Craig (R-Idaho) mounted a last-ditch effort to stop or at least slow the
cybercrime railroad. But he was unsuccessful due to lack of support from
his conservative colleagues, who were eager to give the administration
more power or who just didn't care in their rush to leave for vacation.
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- Now, thanks to the Senate's indifference, any person
in this country who uses a computer in a manner that is of interest to
a law enforcement agency of another country that has signed the Cybercrime
Treaty may find themselves subject to our government collecting information
on them and then sharing it with that foreign agency. The list of other
nations that have already signed the treaty is not one that inspires confidence
the data thus sought will be afforded proper privacy or constitutional
protections. The list of signatory countries already includes Albania,Croatia,
Ukraine, South Africa and dozens of others.
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- Why should this treaty, now part of the law of the land,
concern the average American citizen?
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- For starters, its scope. The treaty covers not only
crimes commonly considered "cybercrimes," that is, crimes of
computers by computers. It covers any activities considered a crime by
any signatory country that simply involves the use of a computer somewhere
along the line. In other words, if the law enforcement officials in Croatia
are investigating activities in their country that they consider criminal
- political speech, or possession of a firearm, for example - they can
now demand of U.S. law enforcement that it collect and turn over to them
information they might demand which they allege involves a U.S. citizen,
notwithstanding that U.S. citizen has done nothing deemed a crime under
U.S. law. Of course, the U.S. citizen would be unaware his own government
was thus snooping on him and sharing the fruits thereof with a foreign
government.
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- Moreover, this latest treaty affords no privacy protections
whatsoever for U.S.citizens. It also will force Internet service providers
to comply, yet requires neither theU.S. government nor the foreign requesting
government to reimburse Internet service providers for costs of such forced
cooperation. In addition, if disputes under the treaty arise, the foreign
requesting government is empowered to take the issue to the International
Court of Justice. Even though the United States has not formally acceded
to the court, it would be required pursuant to the terms of the Cybercrime
Treaty to be bound by its decisions. Although Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, in a letter to the Senate offering unqualified support for the
treaty, promised the administration would not submit any disputes to the
International Court of Justice, such promises are meaningless, because
other nations will do so. Such fine points apparently were unfathomable
by senators eager to do the administration's bidding.
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- The bottom line is that a bipartisan group of U.S. senators,
including many who call themselves "conservative," were far more
concerned with getting out of town for junkets than they were interested
in protecting the privacy of their constituents and the sovereign interests
of this country.
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- *Former Congressman and U.S. Attorney Bob Barr practices
law in Atlanta.
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- www.bobbarr.org.
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- For Added Information
- http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0809edbarr.html
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