Top 10 Civil Liberties News Stories of the Week - August 11, 2006 Edition

Last week, the U.S. Senate ratified the Council of Europe's Cybercrime Treaty. The treaty secures greater international cooperation between nations with regard to Internet crimes, or cybercrimes. Although Article 15 of the treaty claims to respect human rights, the truth is that the Article does little to protect individual rights in any binding way. It is easy to imagine cases where the United States would see the treaty as grounds to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on, say, a U.S. museum curate purchasing Nazi memorabilia from a French or German merchant. Other signatories to the treaty--such as those belonging to the former Soviet Union--have somewhat spotty records on free speech issues in general, creating the disturbing specter of the United States usings surveillance powers to help a repressive overseas ally root out dissent.

What the treaty does acknowledge, for whatever it's worth, is criminal jurisdiction--so one could not under the terms of the treaty be extradited from a country where a certain form of speech is legal to a country where it is not. But the possibility of unacceptable surveillance of U.S. citizens, and of U.S. law enforcement authorities assisting in investigations that run counter to the most basic principles of our democracy, is very real.