So what happened to ratification of the Council of Europe's Cybercrime Convention?  We had a cheery hearing in June, but since then there's been senatorial silence, as far as I can tell.

The Convention makes the US domestic efforts on CALEA look tame.  Puppy-like.

Each ratifier of the Convention is required to "empower its competent authorities" to "compel" service providers, "within [their] existing technical capability," to cooperate and assist the competent authorities in the interception and recording of both "traffic data" and "content data" in realtime of  communications transmitted by means of a computer system.   And service providers are to be obliged to "keep confidential the fact of and any information about the execution of any power provided for" in these surveillance provisions. 

These are broader requirements than any possible reading of CALEA -- which specifically deals with non-content data and does not gag service providers -- would support.  

The Convention does say that service providers can be compelled only within their "existing technical capabilities."  As we have seen in the DOJ response in the FCC's CALEA proceeding, however, any innovator's reliance on such "existing technical capabilities" language would be misplaced.  Law enforcement agencies will want pre-launch approval discretion.

Moreover, law enforcement authorities in countries that ratify the Convention undertake to provide online wiretap assistance (for both content and traffic data) to their treaty partners in the form of a "point of contact available on a 24 hour, 7 day per week basis in order to ensure the provision of immediate assistance for the purpose of investigations or proceedings concerning criminal offences related to computer systems and data, or for the collection of evidence in electronic form of a criminal offence."  The FCC may believe that because the Convention is about to be ratified it should provide the means for assisting law enforcement to carry out these international obligations.

So -- is the Convention about to be ratified in the US?  I have a feeling the pressure was taken off for the election period and that we'll see it come up rather quickly early in 2005.  BSA, ITAA and a bunch of other trade associations recently issued supportive press releases.

It's all too much for me. I am going off to read a volume of Proust, slowly.