[huridocs-tech] Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime

Press Contact
Sabine Zimmer, Council of Europe Press Service
Tel. +33 3 88 41 25 97 - Fax. +33 3 88 41 27 90
E-mail: PressUnit@coe.int

The Convention on Cybercrime, a unique instrument for international
co-operation

Budapest, 23.11.2001 - "Cybercrime and cyber-terrorism represent a serious
challenge to society as a whole and this Convention provides the first
co-ordinated and international response to this challenge", in the words of
Mr Hans Christian Krüger, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of
Europe, speaking on the occasion of the ceremony at which the Convention on
Cybercrime drawn up by the Council was opened for signature.

The Convention was signed on 23 November, at the Hungarian Parliament in
Budapest, by 26 Council of Europe member States and the four non-member
States which had helped with the drafting (Canada, Japan, South Africa and
the United States). This binding treaty will be able to be opened at a
later date to other non-member States, at the invitation of the Committee
of Ministers. It will come into force once it has been ratified by five
States, at least three of which must be Council of Europe members.

He stated that the Convention would give national legal systems ways of
reacting together to crimes committed against or through computer networks,
especially those related to terrorism.

The Deputy Secretary General said that the Convention would evolve, as it
should soon have protocols added to it which would enable it to be adapted
to new challenges arising in the international context. He was pleased that
the Committee of Ministers might decide in the near future to strengthen
the Convention through provisions on terrorist messages sent via the
Internet and their decoding.

At this early stage, a new specific committee of experts has been set up to
prepare, within a year, a draft protocol to be added to the Convention
which will make racist and xenophobic propaganda via computer networks an
offence.

The treaty has a threefold aim: to lay down common definitions of certain
criminal offences relating to the use of the new technologies, to define
methods for criminal investigations and prosecution, and to define methods
for international communication. The criminal offences concerned are:

-	those committed against the confidentiality, integrity and availability
of computer data or systems (such as the spreading of viruses);
-	computer-related offences (such as virtual fraud and forgery);
-	content-related offences (such as the possession and intentional
distribution of child pornography);
-	offences related to infringements of intellectual property and related
rights.

Another objective is to facilitate the conduct of criminal investigations
in cyberspace, thanks to a number of procedural powers, such as the powers
to preserve data, to search and seize, to collect traffic data and to
intercept communications.

The previous day, at the opening of the Conference on Cybercrime, in
Budapest, Guy De Vel, Director General of Legal Affairs at the Council of
Europe, had pointed out that "the text covers only specific criminal
investigations, and certainly does not lend itself to the setting up of an
Orwellian-style general electronic surveillance system".

He concluded by saying that the Convention had been drawn up with care so
as to strike "a precious balance between the requirements of criminal
investigations and respect for individual rights".

For further information, please consult our special file at
http://www.coe.int/Dossiers/



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