Strasbourg, 24.04.01 - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has just announced its support for the 43-member organisation's draft Convention on Cyber-Crime, with the aim of pursuing "a common criminal policy aimed at the protection of society against cyber-crime, inter alia by adopting appropriate legislation and fostering international co-operation".
While welcoming the fact that the draft convention obliges member states to criminalise certain offences, the Assembly called for the imperatives of individual freedom to be guaranteed more substantially in the text. It considers in particular that time limits should be set for data conservation, that the level of criminal or non-criminal sanctions or measures should be specified and that the proportionality principle should systematically be taken into account along with suitable guarantees on human rights.
According to the Assembly, the draft convention presents a challenge to national legal systems in terms of personal data protection. It thus expressed its concern about the differing degree to which guarantees relating to government intrusion are honoured in Council of Europe member states as compared with non-members.
In the course of debate, Assembly members spoke of their disappointment that the draft convention contains no specific provisions for combating the dissemination of racist and xenophobic propaganda via the Internet.
For this reason, the Estonian socialist rapporteur, Mr Ivar Tallo, has recommended immediately drawing up a protocol to the new convention under the title "Broadening the scope of the convention to include new forms of offence", with the purpose of defining and criminalising the dissemination of racist propaganda, abusive storage of hateful messages and use of the Internet for trafficking in human beings.