Making sure you aren’t breaking the law isn’t easy. Making sure you aren’t breaking the law in every country in the world is downright impossible. For web publishers who want to safely travel abroad its a serious issue — unfortunately the issue just got a little more complicated.

Declan McCullagh has an interesting article over at CNet’s News.com concerning an international cybercrime treaty. The treaty allows foreign nations to investigate other country’s citizens.

Requiring dual criminality would let the FBI investigate actual transnational crimes, such as computer intrusions and virus creation. But trumped-up offenses, like a blogger “questioning President Putin,” would not trigger U.S. aid…. Unfortunately, neither the Bush administration nor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been willing to make that change, calling it too “rigid.”

Its clear to me that the current U.S. administration wants to see expanded personal freedoms in countries such China. In other cases, they’d like to see much more (ie: North Korea and Iran.) Other countries aren’t nearly as bad, such as Russia, but still apply strong pressure to critical voices, often resulting in the use of the law to silence these voices. Its no secret, dissidents are using the internet to communicate. That makes them cyber criminals.

Here is the problem — according to the treaty “the FBI must conduct electronic surveillance “in real time” on behalf of another government.” So what happens if I want to start up a website on human rights and China decides I’m a criminal? I’d like to know, because as it stands right now, I’d be an international crook.

I’ll take it a step further, why should your money (whether you are a U.S. citizen, or a citizen of another country which has signed this treaty) be spent to enforce another country’s political speech laws?