concerning problems of criminal procedural law connected with Information Technology;
Having regard to Resolution No. 1 adopted by the European Ministers of Justice at their 21st Conference (Prague, June 1997), which recommended the Committee of Ministers to support the work carried out by the European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) on cybercrime in order to bring domestic criminal law provisions closer to each other and enable the use of effective means of investigation concerning such offences, as well as to Resolution N° 3, adopted at the 23rd Conference of the European Ministers of Justice (London, June 2000), which encouraged the negotiating parties to pursue their efforts with a view to finding appropriate solutions so as to enable the largest possible number of States to become parties to the Convention and acknowledged the need for a swift and efficient system of international co-operation, which duly takes into account the specific requirements of the fight against cybercrime;
Having also regard to the Action Plan adopted by the Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe, on the occasion of their Second Summit (Strasbourg, 10 - 11 October 1997), to seek common responses to the development of the new information technologies, based on the standards and values of the Council of Europe;
Have agreed as follows:
Chapter I - Use of terms
Article 1 - Definitions
For the purposes of this Convention:
a. "computer system" means any device or a group of inter-connected or related devices, one or more of which, pursuant to a program, performs automatic processing of data;
b. "computer data" means any representation of facts, information or concepts in a form suitable for processing in a computer system, including a program suitable to cause a computer system to perform a function;
c. "service provider" means:
i. any public or private entity that provides to users of its service the ability to communicate by means of a computer system, and
ii. any other entity that processes or stores computer data on behalf of such communication service or users of such service. |
After CEBIT awards in 2002,
