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Walker, C., & Akdeniz, Y., "Anti-Terrorism laws and data retention: war is over?" (2003) Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, 54(2), Summer, 159-182. Abstract: The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 signals a determined response to the attacks of September 11th. One aspect involves the facilitation of the use of electronic surveillance in order to prevent, detect or prosecute the perpetrators of terrorism. The role of Part XI of the 2001 Act is to augment existing surveillance powers in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This papers plots the relationships between those two statutes and also their relationship to data protection laws. Delays and difficulties in enforcement are noted and are related to a process of return to greater normality after an initial period of panic.
Case Report by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz: Court of Appeal Clarifies the Law on Downloading Child Pornography from the Web, published in the Computer Law & Security Report Vol. 18 no. 6 2002, pp 433-435.
ISPA letter to the Home Office dated 27 September, 2002 in relation to the ATCS Act Code of Practice on data retention revised version: This letter has been obtained from the Home Office under the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, Director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK).
R v IPSWICH CROWN COURT, EX PARTE NTL GROUP LTD ([2002] EWHC 1585 (Admin): Where the claimant telecommunications company had been required to preserve a client's e-mail communications pending a court order to produce that material, it was implicit in Sch.1 para.11 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 that it had the necessary power to take that action. This implicit power provided lawful authority for intercepting the e-mail such that no offence would be committed under s.1 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000)
US NCAC Free
Expression After September 11th - An Online Index pages
Following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States,
the National Coalition Against Censorship received
repeated calls and e-mails from supporters, media, students and others
concerned with free speech asking about
censorship incidents arising from the attacks. Those who took the time
to contact us are concerned that the events
of 9/11 will result in incidents of government censorship and
suppression of speech by private entities, as is often
the case during times of crisis. See further the EFF Chilling Effects of Anti-Terrorism: "National Security" Toll on Freedom of Expression
pages.
"What
action the Government are taking to protect children using the internet?"
Oral Answers to Questions, Hansard, House of Commons, 19 November, 2001
Akdeniz, Y., "Governing pornography and child pornography on the Internet: The UK Approach," in Cyber-Rights, Protection, and Markets: A Symposium, (2001) University of West Los Angeles Law Review, 247-275. This is an updated version of an earlier piece: Akdeniz, Y., ‘Governance of Pornography and Child Pornography on the Global Internet: A Multi-Layered Approach,’ in Law and the Internet: Regulating Cyberspace, Hart Publishing, 1997, pp 223-241.
UPDATED: Documents obtained under the Open Government Code of Practice in relation to the activities of the Home Office Internet Task Force on Child Protection, September 2001
Internet
Filters: A Public Policy Report, Fall 2001
Marjorie Heins & Christina Cho, Free Expression Policy Project
US National Coalition Against Censorship
Rights &
Democracy Report: China's Golden
Shield: Corporations and the Development of
Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China, October 2001.
Note also the review of China's
Internet Regulations and Domestic Legislation.
The decision of the High Court of Justice in relation to UK ISPs with regards to the Bulger injunction, July 2001. Cyber-liberty advocates have lambasted the UK Internet regulator's decision to close down newsgroups that are known to regularly contain child pornography, dismissing the decision as a desperate attempt to justify the organisation's existence. See the 2001 News section of Cyber-Rights.Org for related news items.
Free Dmitry Sklyarov - Updated: 30 August 2001 - Jailed in the USA for exposing the childishly simple encryption used on a e-book reader made by the Adobe Corporation.
Association
of Chief Police Officers Data Protection Code of Practice: Draft
for Consultation, November
2001
The
Home Secretary David Blunkett
announces the Emergency
Anti-Terrorism Bill which
include measures to enable communication service providers to retain data
generated in the course of their business, namely the records of calls made and
other data - not the content. Government will work with the industry on a Code
of Practice to take this forward, 15 October, 2001.
Yaman
Akdeniz, Case Analysis of (the Yahoo case) League
Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA), French Union of Jewish Students, v
Yahoo! Inc. (USA), Yahoo France, Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris
(The County Court of Paris), Interim Court Order, 20 November, 2000. Citation:
[2001] Electronic Business Law Reports, 1(3) 110-120.
The Straw interview with Sue MacGregor on the BBC Today Programme, 28 September, 2001. You can also listen the Jack Straw interview (MP3 file) - For policy developments following the attacks on America see the Crypto Policy pages.
Free
Dmitry Sklyarov pages -
July 2001: Jailed
in the USA for exposing the childishly simple encryption used on a e-book reader
made by the Adobe Corporation.
"Paedophiles
face crackdown - online and offline" - Home Office Task Force on
Child Protection on the Internet, July 19, 2001
The
decision of the High Court of Justice in relation to UK ISPs with regards to the
Bulger injunction, July 2001.
Information
Commissioner, Annual Report 2001 - Responding to Cybercrime
(pages 14-15) and the Council of Europe Cyber-crime Convention (pages
35-36), July 12, 2001. The retention of traffic data beyond the period
demanded by technical and commercial reasons would be an invasion of the right
to private life assured by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
European
Parliament approves
Cappato Report in relation to privacy in electronic communications, 11 July,
2001.
Minority
Opinion of Maurizion Turco (Lista Emma Bonino) for the European Parliament
Temporary Committee on Echelon report, 05 July, 2001.
Making Britain the safest place for children to surf the net,
Jack Straw's speech, 20 May, 2001.
New
ACLU Advertisement Highlights Massive
U.S. Government Electronic Surveillance - APRIL 2001.
From
the Trade and Industry - Eighth
Report: UK Online Reviewed: the First Annual Report of the E-Minister and
E-Envoy Report, HC 66, 23 March, 2001. Q93. Can you comment on the
suggestion made by the National Criminal Intelligence Service, GCHQ and all the
other spooks which are around, that companies should keep all their
communications for seven years. Would you agree with those comments? (Ms
Hewitt) I do not agree with the proposals. I saw them in the press, I think, ten
days ago. I have not had formal communications with the Home Office, I have
discussed it informally with Charles Clarke and I understand it is his view as
well that that proposal should not be implemented. See
the important parts of the report.
Report
of debates of the Second Part of the 2001 Ordinary Session on the Draft
Cyber-Crime Convention, Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly (Assembly
Spring Session, 23-27 April 2001), 24 April, 2001.
NCIS Press Release, Launch of the United Kingdom's first National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, 18 April 2001.
Head
of UK National
Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC) announced, 30/03/2001 - NTAC will give law enforcement agencies the ability to fight crime in the information age and provide a facility for the processing of lawfully intercepted communications and lawfully seized
protected electronic data, which can then be used to bring serious criminals to justice.
Home
Office plan on IMPROVING CHILD PROTECTION ON THE INTERNET: A PARTNERSHIP FOR
ACTION. See also the Internet Crime Forum report, Chat
Wise, Street Wise – children and Internet chat services and the BBC
coverage, Net
paedophiles face crackdown, 29?03/2001.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE COLUMBIA/WILLAMETTE INC. V AMERICAN COALITION OF LIFE ACTIVISTS, 99-35320, 03/28/01. See also "Seven doctors have been murdered, now judges rule in favour of abortion hit," The Guardian, Friday March 30, 2001; and Wired News, "Anti-Abortion Site Wins Appeal," 28 March, 2001.
Akdeniz,
Y.; Taylor, N.; Walker, C., Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (1):
Bigbrother.gov.uk: State surveillance in the age of information and rights,
(2001) Criminal Law Review, (February), pp. 73-90 at http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/crimlr.pdf
(Published in this format with permission from Sweet & Maxwell, the
publishers of the Criminal Law Review)
MP
warns UK ISPs in relation to Internet content that promotes adoption on the
Internet, 22 January, 2001.
Case
of
Keith Burstein and
Times Newspapers Ltd,
Case No: A2/2000/0510, decision of the Court of Appeal, 20 December,
2000. A libel case that relates to the extent to which evidence may be adduced
in reduction of libel damages.
Council of
Europe Draft
Cyber-Crime Convention, version no 24, 24 November, 2000.
New
Hi-Tech Crime Investigators in £25 Million Boost to Combat Cybercrime in the UK,
13 November, 2000.
Council of
Europe Draft
Cyber-Crime Convention, version no 22,
October 2000.
Ukrainian
ISPs demonstrate their willingness to be subservient to Big
Brother and information about Network monitoring in Ukraine:
legal framework, July 2000, at http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/ukrainia.htm
(provided by Privacy Ukraine).
Human
Rights Watch press release, China: Foreign companies
should protest Internet detention, June 2000, at http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/china.htm
RIP for Individual Rights? By Charles Clarke M.P.,
Minister of State, Home Office, Posted to
ukcrypto mailing list on 13 March, 2000 at http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/rip-clarke.htm
The
Electronic Frontier: The Challenge of Unlawful Conduct Involving
the Use of the Internet: A Report of the US
President’s Working Group on Unlawful Conduct on the
Internet, February 2000, at http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/unlawfulconduct.html.
The finalised report is at http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/unlawful.htm
with a publication date of March 2000.
Hulbert’s
Case, the Lord Chancellor and Censorship of the Internet:
A Statement by Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK), 11
November, 1999. Relevant to this issue is the case of Godfrey
v. Demon Internet. See Akdeniz, Y., Case Analysis: Laurence
Godfrey v. Demon Internet Limited, (1999) Journal of
Civil Liberties, 4(2), 260-267 (July). An online version is
at http://www.cyber-rights.org/reports/demon.htm
Godfrey v Demon
Internet Ltd, QBD, [1999] 4
All ER 342, [2000] 3 WLR 1020; [2001] QB 201 - full decision
R v Jonathan Bowden (1999),
CA (Otton LJ, Smith J, Collins J) 10/11/99 Summary:
The downloading and/or printing out of computer data of
indecent images of children from the Internet was capable of
amounting to an offence within the meaning of s.1(1)(a)
Protection of Children Act 1978. See further the BBC Online
Story, "Key
ruling on net child porn," November 10, 1999 in relation
to this judgment.
Privacy
and Human Rights 1999- An International Survey of Privacy Laws
and Developments (EPIC 1999)
Revised and updated from the 1998 edition, "Privacy
and Human Rights 1999" surveys the privacy laws of over
fifty countries around the world. Among the report's key findings
is that there is a growing trend in almost all jurisdictions to
enact comprehensive privacy and data protection acts, either to
address past government abuses, to promote electronic commerce,
or to ensure compatibility with international standards developed
by the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Less
positive is the finding that new technologies are increasingly
eroding privacy rights, and that surveillance authority is
regularly abused, even in many democratic countries. Available
from amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/189304405X/cyberighcybelibe
US
Department of Justice Report - Cyberstalking:
A New Challenge for Law Enforcement and Industry, a report from the Attorney General to the Vice
President, August 1999.
For a detailed analysis of the legal situation in the UK see Ellison, L., & Akdeniz, Y., "Cyber-stalking: the Regulation of Harassment on the Internet," [1998] Criminal Law Review, December Special Edition: Crime, Criminal Justice and the Internet, pp 29-48. Click here for For ordering this special issue An online version of this article is available through http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/stalking_article.pdf
Project
Trawler: Crime On The Information Highways, National
Criminal Intelligence Service, June 1999: NCIS launched
Project Trawler, its study of 'computer crime', in July 1996.
Published as a classified strategic threat assessment for law
enforcement practitioners, it is also being published in an
unclassified format in order to raise further awareness and
understanding of the different criminal threats that exist and
stimulate debate about the ways in which they may be eliminated
or contained.
Among the Report's key judgements are:
Filters and Freedom - Free Speech
Perspectives on Internet Content Controls (EPIC 1999)
Filters and Freedom collects essays and studies that examine the
effects of filtering on free expression. Although filtering was
originally proposed as a technological solution that would
forestall official censorship, these critiques show that
filtering poses its own significant threats to free expression on
the Internet. Partly as a result of the writings contained in
this collection, the headlong rush toward the development and
acceptance of filtering and rating systems has slowed.
Filters and Freedom is available from Amazon.com at .com http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893044068/cyberighcybelibe
Yaman
Akdeniz , Sex
on the Net: The Dilemma of Policing Cyberspace,
Reading: South Street Press, July 1999. For further information
see http://www.cyber-rights.org/bookstore
Dorothy
Denning & William E. Baugh, Jr., Hiding Crimes in
Cyberspace, Information, Communication and Society,
Vol. 2, No 3, Autumn 1999, and in Cybercrime, B. D. Loader and D.
Thomas (eds.), Routledge, 1999, at http://cryptome.org/hiding-db.htm and/or http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/crypto/hiding1.doc
Reporters
Sans Frontières, The twenty enemies of the Internet,
9 August 1999, at http://www.rsf.fr/uk/alaune/ennemisweb.html
Human
Rights Watch report: The Internet in the Middle East and
North Africa: Free Expression and Censorship, at http://www.hrw.org/advocacy/internet/mena/index.htm,
July 1999.
R v GRAHAM WADDON (1999),
Court: Southwark Crown Court (Judge Hardy) 30 June, 1999.
Summary: When an image had been transmitted across the
Internet the act of publication took place when the data was
transmitted by the defendant or his agent to the service
provider, and the publication or transmission was in effect still
taking place when the data was received. The computers involved
in the transmission of the data were mere post boxes, therefore
the only certificate that the prosecution needed to provide was
from the computer from which the image had been obtained. Please
note that this case is not binding on any other cases and is
currently on appeal (September 1999). 18-month suspended prison
sentence imposed on 6 September 1999.
European
Union Common Position of 27 May 1999 adopted by the Council on the basis of
Article 34 of the Treaty on European Union, on negotiations relating to the
Draft Convention on Cyber Crime held in the Council of Europe, Official Journal
L 142 , 05/06/1999 p. 0001 - 0002.
Cryptography and Liberty 1999 - An International Survey of
Encryption Policy (EPIC 1999)
In the second annual survey of encryption policy around
the globe, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) finds
that few countries have restrictions on the use, manufacture or
sale of cryptography. However, export controls remain a powerful
obstacle to the development and free flow of encryption products
and services. Cryptography and Liberty classifies policies in
more than a hundred countries from least resrtictive to most
restrictive, and identifies recent trends and developments,
including the impact of the 1997 OECD Guidelines, the 1998
Wassenaar Arrangement, and changes in policies in France and the
United Kingdom. Includes extensive appendices. Available from
Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893044033/cyberighcybelibe
European
Parliament-sponsored reports which have been prepared as
follow-up to the 1998 "Appraisal of the Technologies of
Political Control."
The four-part series is titled "Development of
Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information
(an appraisal of technologies of political control),"
April and May 1999.
Part 1: "The perception of economic risks arising from the potential vulnerability of electronic commercial media to interception - Survey of opinions of experts. Interim Study," by Nikos Bogonikolos, at http://cryptome.org/dst-1.htm
Part 2: "The legality of the interception of electronic communications: A concise survey of the principal legal issues and instruments under international, European and national law," by Prof. Chris Elliott, at http://cryptome.org/dst-2.htm
Part 3: "Encryption and cryptosystems in electronic surveillance: a survey of the technology assessment issues," by Dr. Franck Leprévost, at http://cryptome.org/dst-3.htm (in French)
Part 4: "The state of the art in Communications Intelligence (COMINT) of automated processing for intelligence purposes of intercepted broadband multi-language leased or common carrier systems, and its applicability to COMINT targeting and selection, including speech recognition," by Duncan Campbell, at http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/stoa_cover.htm
European
Commission Proposal for a European Parliament and Council
Directive on a
common framework for electronic signatures (98/C 325/04) (Text with EEA
relevance) COM(1998) 297 final - 98/0191(COD), (Submitted by the Commission on
16 June 1998).
The OECD
Cryptography Policy Guidelines and the report on background and issues of
cryptography policy, March 1997.
UK Police
Ban of NEWSGROUPS - See the letter
from the Metropolitan Police to the UK ISPs, August 1996.
For further information about this issue see Akdeniz, Yaman (1997) ‘Governance of Pornography and Child Pornography on the Global Internet: A Multi-Layered Approach,’ in Edwards, L and Waelde, C eds., Law and the Internet: Regulating Cyberspace, Hart Publishing, pp 223-241 and Akdeniz , Yaman, Sex on the Net: The Dilemma of Policing Cyberspace, Reading: South Street Press, Summer 1999 .
Department of Trade and Industry,
Electronic
Communications Bill (explanatory notes), 23 July, 1999. The Bill is here.
Department of Trade and Industry,
Promoting Electronic
Commerce, Consultation on Draft Legislation
and the Government’s Response to the
Trade and Industry Committee’s Report, Cm 4477, July 1999.
Department of Trade and Industry,
A report for the DTI
summarising responses to Building Confidence in Electronic Commerce, URN 99/891.
Department of Trade and Industry,
Net Benefit: The Electronic Commerce
Agenda for the UK, (DTI/Pub 3619, London, 1998).
COM (97) 503 Communication from the Commission to the European
Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and
the Committee of the Regions ensuring security and trust in
electronic communication, Towards a European Framework for Digital
Signatures and Encryption - October 1997.
Department of Trade and
Industry, Public
Consultation paper on licensing of trusted third parties for the provision of
encryption services, March 1997.
DTI White Paper on
regulatory intent concerning use of encryption on public networks, June 1996.
Banned in Canada but
available through Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK)
Read
about the CYBERsitter software Are
they really offering parental control ?
Bangemann
Report, Europe and
the Global Information Society (1994)