Essay - Law While the European Union is the Body Most in...

Law

While the European Union is the body most in the news, it ***** by no means the oldest such body involved in dealing with criminal activities in Europe. The Council of Europe (CoE) is older, hav*****g been established in 1949 to uphold and streng*****n human rights and to promote democracy ***** the rule ***** law ***** Europe. Since then, its 44 member states, often with the cooperation of the United States, have ***** branching out beyond that mandate (FAQs, U.S. Department of Justice Web site 2003). ***** organization, far more than ***** United Nations or the ********** Union, has begun to tackle the issues involved in cybercrime, as well as how to investigate and prosecute offenders. Specific extradition and prisoner transfer protocols are, at this point, matters to be w*****ked ***** between ***** states *****, and ***** not specified in the Convention on Cybercrime itself in any specific manner.

History of European efforts regarding *****

The Council ***** Europe has been working ***** threats posed by hacking and other computer-related crimes since the late 1980s. In 1989, it published recommendations for new *****s criminalizing certain activities committed through computer networks (*****, U.S. ***** of Justice Web ***** 2003).

***** 1995, ***** group ***** a second study, containing principles concerning the criminal procedural laws appertaining to cybercrime (FAQs, U.S. Department of Justice Web site 2003). In 1997, the CoE established a Committee of Experts on Crime in Cyberspace (PC-CY) to begin drafting a binding convention to facilitate international ***** in the investigation and prosecution of ***** ***** (*****, U.S. ***** of ***** Web ***** 2003).

Paralleling the interest of the European community in cybercrime was an interest in financial crime, which are sometimes synonymous when conducted via Internet or computer networks. In 1988, international governmental organizations worked to increase regula*****ry and ***** en*****cement of various ***** aimed at stemming the growth ***** transnational *****. The effort included criminalization of various business and financial transactions, imposing new due diligence requirements of the private sector, ***** the weakening ***** privacy and confidentiality laws; also included was increasing penalties for non-compliance with regulatory efforts, ***** law enforcement techniques including undercover sting operations, and greater search powers for law ***** (Zagaris, 1999). While governments tried to stay away from the role of ***** 'heavy,' that rule ***** shifted ***** the ***** sector, so much so that commentators comp*****d the ef*****ts to Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World (Zagaris, *****), a novel of a future in which everything a citizen did was instantly known to the government.

Parallel initiatives with a be*****ring on *****

***** 1988, the ***** Nati*****s Vienna Convention *****gainst the Trafficking in Illegal Narcotic ***** Psychotropic Substances set out ***** requirements ***** criminalize money laundering and immobilize the assets ***** persons involved in illegal narcotics trafficking (Zagaris, 1999). In *****, the G-7 Economic Summit Group created the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), operating out of the Office of Economic Cooperation ***** Development (OECD), headquartered in Paris (Zagaris, *****).

There were certain policy