[CH] Internet Police
Rob Solarion (solarion@1starnet.com)
Fri, 23 Nov 2001 23:57:06 -0600
Associated Press, By D. Ian Hopper, 23 November 2001
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department, using the recently approved
anti-terrorism law, can now prosecute foreign hackers when they attack
computers in their own or other countries outside the United States.
Critics said this week that the change could make the United States the
world's Internet policeman and set a precedent that would apply American
values to the worldwide network.
Prosecutions can occur if any part of a crime takes place within U.S.
borders. A large part of the Internet's communications traffic goes
through the United States, even in messages that travel from one foreign
country to another.
The new powers, which have no parallel in other nations, troubled one
former Justice Department computer crimes prosecutor:
"It's a massive expansion of U.S. sovereignty," said Mark Rasch, now with
computer security from Predictive Systems.
The change was highlighted last month by the Justice Department in its
field guidance to federal prosecutors.
"Individuals in foreign countries frequently route communications through
the United States, even as they hack from one foreign country to another,"
the recommendations said. "The amendment creates the option, where
appropriate, of prosecuting such criminals in the United States."
The FBI referred questions to the Justice Department. A Justice Department
spokeswoman did not return calls for comment.
Much of the Internet's message traffic travels through the United States,
dependent on American hubs in Virgina and California.
Jessica Marantz of the Internet statistics firm Telegeography said more
than 80 percent of Internet access points in Asia, Africa, and South
America are connected through U.S. cities. Therefore, an email sent
between two cities in China probably will travel through the United States
-- putting its contents under American jurisdiction.
The Justice Department pushed for the legislation as a way to fight
terrorism, and American interests overseas could be protected by the change.
But the change in law creates a precedent that could be used to prosecute
any computer crime, Mr. Rasch said, from basic data theft to sending
pornographic pictures. Current law already allows pornography prosecutions
in any jurisdiction the pictures pass through, but this has not yet been
applied on an international scale to Internet transmissions.
For example, an owner of a pornography website in Sweden might be
prosecuted for sending a racy picture to a friend in Norway if the message
happened to travel through a computer in Fairfax, Virginia. In that case,
a U.S. prosecutor could try to extradite the sender and prosecute him for
breaking Virginia law, using Virginia's standards for obscenity.
[COMMENT : By way of explanation, the reason that this reporter cites
Fairfax, Virginia, as an example is simple. America OnLine is located in
the Fairfax/Reston area. Over the past 4-5 years, AOL has bought out UUNet
and Worldcom.com, two of the biggest Internet routers, as well as Netscape
Communications. Subsequently, AOL has gotten so huge that it bought out
Time-Warner and now controls not only those two giants, including Life
Magazine, but also CBS and CNN, not to mention all sorts of peripheral
companies. In case you are not familiar with the metropolitan geography of
the Washington, DC, area, Fairfax is located about halfway between Reston
and McLean, where the CIA is headquartered. I just thought that I'd point
that out. RS]
"We haven't done that yet, because it's an affront to the way the Internet
works," Mr. Rasch said. "But now [with the antiterror law] we're
criminalizing anything that happens over the Internet because traffic
passes through the United States."
FBI agents complain about the difficulty of computer crime investigations
that almost always venture overseas, requiring time-consuming search
warrants at every step and the cooperation of foreign governments. They
also are frustrated by offshore pornography and gambling sites, accessed by
Americans, that are legal in their own countries.
"There are still a lot of countries out there without adequate [computer
crime] laws," said Bruce McConnell, who is conducting a survey on
international computer laws. "Extradition is slow and expensive, so I
would guess it wouldn't be used except in the worst cases."