Don't step away from your computer: the Convention (in force from July 2004) "serves as both a guide for nations developing comprehensive national legislation on cybercrime and as a framework for international co-operation between signatory countries".
Implementation will be dependent on the specifics of the Australian legislation giving effect to the treaty. It is unclear, from the announcement, whether Australia will ratify the Additional Protocol Concerning the Criminalisation of Acts of a Racist and Xenophobic Nature Committed through Computer Systems, eg criminalising dissemination of racist material via the net and racist and xenophobic-motivated threats or insults [exegesis here]. In Europe the Convention has been held to cover expressions of Holocaust denial. The US has, unsurprisingly, announced that it will not be ratifying the Protocol: US neonazis can breathe free.
The Ministers state that -
Cybercrime poses a significant challenge for our law enforcement and criminal justice system. The Internet makes it easy for criminals to operate from abroad, especially from those countries where regulations and enforcement arrangements are weak. It is critical that laws designed to combat cybercrime are harmonised, or at least compatible to allow for cooperation internationally.The excellent Derridian has meanwhile pointed me to the Harvard National Security Journal [HNSJ], a new publication grappling with issues such the legality of targeted killing by drone and legal frameworks for cyberwar. It's a nice corrective to the somewhat flaccid analysis in several papers in Spinning Intelligence: Why Intelligence Needs the Media, Why the Media Needs Intelligence (London: Hurst 2009) edited by Robert Dover & Michael Goodman.
The Convention promotes a coordinated approach to cybercrime by requiring countries to criminalise four types of offences, including:
i. offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data and systems, including illegal access to computer systems, illegal interception, data interference, systems interference and the misuse of devices;It also establishes procedures to make investigations more efficient and provides systems to facilitate international co-operation, including:
ii. computer-related offences, including forgery and fraud;
iii. content-related offences, including child pornography; and
iv. offences related to the infringement of copyright and other related rights.
· helping authorities from one country to collect data in another country;To date, over 40 nations have either signed or become a party to the Convention, including the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa. Over 100 nations are also using the Convention as the basis to strengthen their legislation to combat the threat of cybercrime.
· empowering authorities to request the disclosure of specific computer data;
· allowing authorities to collect or record traffic data in real-time;
· establishing a 24/7 network to provide immediate help to investigators; and
· facilitating extradition and the exchange of information.
Daniel Geer's 'Cybersecurity and National Policy' in the HNSJ for example comments that -
Some degree of international engagement is essential for no other reason than that our opponents are location-less. Much work has been done on this, but the path to any treaty is steep and the clock of upward progress ticks in years, not minutes. The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime is a case in point. At the same time, the recent decision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to wildly proliferate the number of top-level domains and the character sets in which domains can be enumerated is the single most criminogenic act ever taken in or around the digital world. United Nations treaties are all but useless — unenforceable and thus popular with the worst state offenders — so “coalitions of the willing” are the best we can hope for, taking the G8’s Financial Action Task Force as an example. Put differently, international engagement is likely necessary but certainly insufficient.
