High UN Official Calls for Global Attack on Internet Drug Information
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/143.html#unagain
The UN official in charge of the global body's international drug
control office called last week for a crackdown on the use of the
Internet in the drug trade. But his comments left unclear
whether he draws a distinction between the use of the Internet to
disseminate information about drugs and drug policy and its use
in criminal activity by drug trafficking organizations.
Pino Arlacchi, head of the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention (ODCCP, http://www.undcp.org), based in Vienna, told a
New York press conference last Thursday that his organization
will explore giving "universal jurisdiction" to Internet drug
crimes because cyber crime so easily evades traditional national
jurisdictions.
Under international law, the only crimes that now qualify for
universal jurisdiction are genocide and crimes against humanity.
Because of the global nature of the drug trade, Arlacchi told the
press conference, "It is extremely difficult to route a case into
a precise jurisdiction, so we believe this problem is encouraging
us to go in the direction of universal jurisdiction."
He said the idea will be explored in depth at a UN symposium at
year's end in Palermo, Italy, to mark the signing of an
international convention on organized crime. The symposium will
address expanding universal jurisdiction to money laundering and
Internet crime.
Arlacchi admitted, however, that use of the Internet in actual
drug trafficking or for online drug sales is "very small, it is
minimal."
Arlacchi's remarks provided hints that he has more than drug
traffickers' use of the Internet in mind. The former Italian
Mafia prosecutor added that, "The Internet is more and more
important in providing exchanges of information, in expanding the
market, particularly the final market, and we are very worried
about it."
Arlacchi said that by searching one key word, which he refused to
identify, "You receive advice on where to find drugs, you receive
a lot of extremely dangerous information."
Even worse, in the drug bureaucrat's view, "You can enter a
completely different world where the issue [drug policy] is
treated in the opposite view as it should be. Unfortunately,
some of these views are spreading and we are now thinking about
some instrument to at least stop the expansion of this flow of
information."
The preceding statement appears clearly directed not at drug
traffickers but at organizations and individuals expressing
policy preferences different from those of the UN ODCCP.
To Sarah Andrews, policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, a non-profit civil liberties organization
(http://www.epic.org), Arlacchi's remarks "sound like an argument
for censorship."
Andrews told DRCNet that Arlacchi's proposal should be seen in
context. "This is part of a larger attempt to control the
Internet on the international level," she noted. "The European
Union has drafted similar legislation," she said, adding that
"this reprises the arguments about cryptography, where law
enforcement officials spoke of dire threats but the number of
crimes linked to it is really small."
Andrews said EPIC would oppose such a move by the UN. "This is
an exaggerated response to a small problem," she said. "There is
a need for security," she added, "but giving law enforcement more
access to private communications only gives them overreaching
powers."
Another UN drug agency, the International Narcotics Control
Board, has called on nations to restrict the right of their
citizens to discuss drug legalization. (See
http://reason.com/9808/col.coffin.html for an excellent
discussion by Phil Coffin in Reason magazine.)
Arlacchi drew charges of lacking realism after he spearheaded a
major UN drug summit in 1998; the summit's title was "Drug Free
in Ten Years: We Can Do It."
**************************************************************************
Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues
Send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words subscribe FA
on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per month)
Matthew Gaylor,1933 E. Dublin-Granville Rd., PMB 176, Columbus, OH 43229
(614) 313-5722 Archived at http://www.egroups.com/list/fa/
**************************************************************************
