Australian gov to sign treaty to appease music and video companies.

There goes our privacy folks.

The Australian Federal Government has introduced policy to endorse an international treaty intended to facilitate the identification, extradition plus conviction of cybercriminals round the world.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Stephen Smith yesterday declared Australia would comply to the Council of Europe Conference on Cybercrime.

The Convention, which was established in 2004 by pressure from the US music and movie industries, demands actions that permit authorities to pressure internet service suppliers to hand over up information about customers, and capture and report traffic.

Parties to the Conference additionally conform to facilitate expatriation of criminals sentenced to a minimum of  12 months imprisonment and gathering of information in one other country.

It encompasses unlawful interception plus system interference, forgery, fraud, and "offences related to the infringement of copyright and additional linked rights," (that's the music / movie industry part!) in accordance with an announcement from the Minister.

While Australia took "a powerful view" of cybercrime behaviour, a number of legislative amendments are nonetheless essential ahead of it was able to sign the treaty.

The representative didn't divulge a timeframe for the introduction of amendments as well as signing of the treaty.

"For Australia to sign the treaty Australia be obliged to make legislative changes to our domestic law to fulfill the requirements of the convention," he said.

"This has been taking place on an ongoing foundation in consultation with relevant stakeholders, for example, the Commonwealth has updated cybercrime offences within the Prison Code Act 1995 (Cth)."

Presently, more than forty nations are get together to the treaty, including the U.S. (thats where the big music and movie industries are), Canada, Japan and South Africa.

This is despite preliminary opposition from privacy and civil rights advocacy teams together with the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), of which Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) was a founding member.

EFA opposed a draft treaty that was launched to the general public in 2000. In July 2001, EFA spokesperson Greg Taylor said the treaty was "fundamentally imbalanced" and failed to deal with privacy rights while focussing almost utterly on law enforcement demands.

"It contains very detailed and sweeping powers of computer search and seizure and government surveillance of voice, email and information communications, but no correspondingly detailed standards to guard privacy and limit authorities use of such powers," it wrote.

"That is although privacy is the most important concern of Web customers worldwide."

Senator Conroy would love this. Let Steven Smith cop the flack for as soon as, while authorities indicators away more of our privacy and our rights.  Where will be the protections of our citizens from unwarranted intrusions into our normal law-abiding activities and from unfair treatment by police and our legal system?

It might appear the web is being used to show Australia into a nanny-led, police state by the back door. Already the Kevin rudd Government and the Howard/Abbott unChristian onerous-right Libs don't give a stuff about what occurs to our citizens on the hand of overseas countries.

Another fantastic failure by Stephen Conroy. How is signing this going to be in any way shape or form in Australia's interest? When was the last time we needed somebody extradited here to face trial for a cybercrime? Never? And what about all those petty criminals around the world now facing 10 year stints in US jails after being passed across to the US for absolute trivial things. What about the huge growing patent industry based in the states which is targeting every open source project under the sun? This Kevin rudd government doesn't know what its doing, has a terrible sense of direction and is made up of ministers that should go and do a beginners course in the fields that they look after. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice next election.Carry on the elections so we can present to these bastard politicians what we think of their behind-closed-door activities!