European Arrest Warrant and publishing/distributing on the internet

[James Hammerton]

Hi,

Under the draft Extradition Bill, which implements the European Arrest
Warrant, if an EU country requests that a British resident be
extradited for an "extradition offence", then so long as various rules
such as the double jeopardy rule are observed, the extradition will go
ahead without any consideration by the British courts of the evidence
against the resident concerned. 

The offence needs to be punishable by upto a year in prison, *in the
country requesting extradition* (dual-criminality does not apply). For
conduct to be an extradition offence it must have occurred in the
country requesting extradition and be an offence falling under the
list of offences given in a Framework document. This list of offences
includes "computer-related crime". 

So what does all this have to do with ukcrypto? Potentially (and I
have a query relating to this), should this be implemented, it means
that if any EU country makes it an offence to distribute a piece of
software or a document, then British citizens could be extradited to
that country for posting the software on their webpages or to
usenet that is legal in Britain but not in another EU country. 

For this to happen, the crucial question for a British court to answer
is whether posting something to a website accessible in another
country constitutes conduct occurring in that country. If the courts
decide "yes", then EU countries will get the right to extradite
British citizens for the things they post to the internet that are
illegal in those countries. All it would then take is for one other EU
country to ban the distribution of e.g. copies of PGP, and they'd be
able to enforce the ban in Britain. Whether the same would apply for
all EU countries, would depend on what they regard as conduct
occurring in other countries.

So here's my query: Are there any British precedents relating to
whether posting things to websites or usenet groups, constitutes
conduct occurring in all the countries they are subsequently
accessible from?

The draft Extradition Bill can be found here (along with the Framework
Document on the EU Arrest Warrant):

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/extraditionbill/extradition.htm

Cheers,

James