[Nettime-bold] Re: no comment department

[Martin Lucas <mlucas@igc.org>]

After the largest anti-war march in history I guess they couldn't be expected to leave it alone.

m.l.


Europe Hacker Laws Could Make Protest a Crime

March 5, 2003
By PAUL MELLER



BRUSSELS, March 4 - The justice ministers of the European
Union have agreed on laws intended to deter computer
hacking and the spreading of computer viruses. But legal
experts say the new measures could pose problems because
the language could also outlaw people who organize protests
online, as happened recently, en masse, with protests
against a war in Iraq.

The agreement, reached last week, obliges all 15 member
states to adopt a new criminal offense: illegal access to,
and illegal interference with an information system. It
calls on national courts to impose jail terms of at least
two years in serious cases.

Critics from the legal profession say the agreement makes
no legal distinction between an online protester and
terrorists, hackers and spreaders of computer viruses that
the new laws are intended to trap.

Last Wednesday, protesters against a possible war against
Iraq barraged the White House and Senate offices with tens
of thousands of messages by phone, fax and e-mail, as part
of what was billed as the first-ever "virtual protest
march."

Under the new agreement, if European Union citizens
undertook a similar electronic bombardment of the e-mail,
fax and phone lines of the British prime minister, Tony
Blair, they might be liable for prosecution, said Leon de
Costa, chief executive of Judicium, a legal consultancy
based in London. The new code "criminalizes behavior which,
until now, has been seen as lawful civil disobedience," Mr.
de Costa said.

Ulrich Sieber, a professor of law at Munich University,
urged lawmakers to amend the code to add a specific
reference to the right to free expression as outlined in
the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Human Rights.

Marco Cappato, a European Parliament deputy from Italy,
said he failed to persuade the ministers to insert wording
that differentiates between the online equivalent of
trespassing and someone breaking and entering. The role of
the European Parliament is consultative, so it cannot force
changes to the law.

A European Union diplomat involved in the drafting of the
measures agreed that protection mechanisms in the code are
soft and said that amendments could still be made.



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/international/europe/05BRUS.html?ex=1047903933&ei=1&en=43a1123f2fbb7654





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