New Legislation Would Crack Down On Online Criminal Havens 208
Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) have introduced a bill that would penalize foreign countries that fail to crack down on cyber criminals operating within their borders. Under the bill the White House would have the responsibility of identifying countries that pose cyber threats and the president would have to present to Congress in an annual report. Countries identified as 'hacker havens' would then have to develop plans of action to combat cybercrimes or risk cuts to their US export dollars, foreign-direct investment funds and trade assistance grants. Numerous American employers, including Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Symantec, PayPal, eBay, McAfee, American Express, Mastercard and Visa, as well as Facebook, are supporting the Senators' legislation."
Re:Well (Score:1, Interesting)
Not just the DMCA, but ACTA, which makes the DMCA look tame, especially the fact that ISPs have to record *every* packet you send out for data mining reasons for 7 years.
so will the WTO give Antigua even more free IP ove (Score:3, Interesting)
so will the WTO give Antigua even more free IP over this as the US may try to push the Online gambling ban?
Re:Well (Score:2, Interesting)
This could be dicey.
So what is an online criminal?
What situations would involve reduced trade with, say, Canada...
1) Botnet initiated in Canada, with participants all over the world
2) Botnet initiated in another country or the US, with Canadian participants
3) Someone who downloaded the latest Metallica song in Canada
4) Someone who posted a copyrighted Fox News report on their Canadian blog
5) Hackers! from Canada
6) A website that is infected with malware, with the company or server residing in Canada
A few are legitimate, and the rest are going to be interesting. My guess is all of the above will be part of the definition of an "online criminal"
I used Canada, because I'm Canadian.
...and what about Tax Havens? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we likely to see legislation against tax havens that allow people to secrete money away from legitimate taxation and policing enquiries?
Oh silly me - that's where the politicians and their rich friends put their money...
Re:Welcome to the Empire (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
This legislation is just going to blow up in our face as soon as other countries start demanding that we rat out our citizens for "criminal" activity (e.g. dissent, political freedom, etc.)
i'd guess it's more targeted at illegal activity such as 'piracy' and 'copyright infringement'. This smacks of RIAA/MPAA and leverage against countries such as Sweden for their lack of ability to close down The Pirate Bay.
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:1, Interesting)
Orrin Hatch is famous for sucking up to the RIAA/MPAA
Re:The last gasp attempts (Score:3, Interesting)
Threaten anyone and every one to fall in line like the tyrants citizen citizens and encroach on others sovereignty.
Sounds an awful lot like you're talking about China there except for the last gasp and dying empire parts.
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Orrin Hatch is famous for sucking
FTFY.
Re:No Disney? (Score:3, Interesting)
I sure as hell don't trust the US Gov't to use a very narrow definition of "cyber criminal"
And this is exactly the problem, no one trusts the US government (more specifically, 76% of Americans only trust the government to do the right thing only some of the time, or never). Not just with defining cyber criminal, with anything.
Unfortunately it is with good reason. After a decade of Bush (and not just Bush, the incompetent congress that was with him), followed up with bailouts for incompetent banks and Obama pushing a lousy healthcare bill, there isn't a lot to trust.
There isn't a good solution that I know, but one thing is certain: everyone, left, right, and center, is distrustful of government right now. Because honestly there's nothing wrong with asking other countries to take care of their cyber criminals, the problem only comes with the ulterior motives.
Re:Welcome to the Empire (Score:4, Interesting)
You forgot weapons of mass destruction: the US remains the only nation in the world ever to have dropped a nuclear weapon on a civilian-populated area.
I do wonder how much further the US can push its luck before the rest of the world just starts telling them to shove it, though. As I have noted before, they are no longer the world's "superpower" by any meaningful standard, though plenty of people in the US government don't seem to have realised that yet. These repeated attempts to promote US business interests abroad might carry some weight in the US where they recently officially legalised buying the government, but it's not really in anyone else's interests. For the rest of the world, sucking up to a major foreign government is only worth it if the rewards are commensurate, and no-one really believes that about the US any more, and there is a lot of political competition today in many states with traditionally close ties to the US making it harder to do things quietly behind closed doors than it used to be (see: SWIFT, ACTA).
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
I dunno about that, I can see penalties against Nigeria happening. It would be interesting to see how tough they get with China and Russia which seem to be the biggest cybercrime havens. I'm sooooo f*ckin sure man.
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd guess it's more targeted at illegal activity such as 'piracy' and 'copyright infringement'.
And you'd probably be right, given that it's Orrin Hatch that's sponsoring the bill. Orrin has very strong RIAA ties and is a very strong supporter of them.