eople love easy synopses. Amruta Patil, India’s first female writer-graphic novelist, is quick to counter the trite summary of her 2008 debut from Harper Collins, Kari, as a comic about a suicidal lesbian. Now that the graphic novel is emerging in India, notably from innovators like Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Amruta wanted to send out an unusual protagonist into the literary scene. “Kari is a young, deeply introverted, asocial and queer woman, a counterpoint to the hyperfeminine prototypes you keep coming across.” Twice during the course of the story, Kari stands on the brink, literally teetering on the ledge of a building. The first time round, she chooses to jump; the second, she chooses not to.

And yet, the book is not an angsty coming-out tale. Kari is dark, funny and detached and her queerness is incidental, rather than central to her journey. And before you jump to conclusions, the book is not autobiographical. For her debut, Amruta chose an atypical literary crossover, more text-based than most graphic novels, the story flowing back and forth between voiceover narration and visuals. She’s the first to admit that not all her experiments worked: “The book is very raw – I was working on instinct.” Even so, Kari announces a highly individual voice, part of the growing chorus of women authors in world comics. Last January, Amruta returned to New Delhi after a European residency at the Maison des Auteurs in Angoulême, France’s capital of comics, with some valuable insights: “I ought to stop apologising for my lack of exposure to ‘norms’. My lack of familiarity with storytelling traditions, my gender, my foreignness – these could all be assets. And I need to tell stories that matter.”

Few stories matter more in India than the great all-encompassing mythohistorical epic, the Mahabharat, which she immersed herself in as a child through the comic-book adaptations in the ubiquitous Amar Chitra Katha series. Now, almost as a coming-of-age ritual, she has chosen to engage with these classics in her next project, Parva. “It’s a mammoth of a project that I am trying to steer by its tail. It keeps on changing me. I have gone from cocky and ambitious to far more diffident and  humble. I am living differently, more pared down, austere. The way I eat has changed, and the way I conduct myself in the world. It has slowed me down, made me aware of hubris, and hopefully helped me become a little more thorough. Which is the only way you ought to work on a project like this. You don’t want to play with cosmic tales lightly.”

By Paul Gravett

amrutapatil.blogspot.com/

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f New York City is a state of mind, then Jorge Colombo captures the metropolis’ thoughts like no other. Colombo’s beautiful illustrations of New York City have graced the cover of The New Yorker several times, brilliantly depicting icons such as silhouetted rooftop water towers, the illuminated Chrysler Building at night, Fifth Avenue in the snow, or the ubiquitous hot dog stand. All of the images were finger painted on location on an iPhone; to passerby walking by the artist, he simply appeared to be sending text messages or reading a very long email. This sophisticated volume presents one hundred of his best pieces in full colour, accompanied by his recollections and comentaries about each location. Every scene is unmistakably New York: familiar, grand, timeless, yet filtered by modern, cutting-edge technology. Immediately recognizable to native New Yorkers, but also perfect for anyone who admires the Big Apple, this is a monograph of an artist and of a city.

Jorge Colombo, a Portuguese-born illustrator, designer, and photographer, has lived in the USA for more than twenty years, and he has been depicting American urban landscape ever since. His lushly rendered scenes are currently finger painted from life, on location, and using an iPhone, bringing the idea of traditional outdoor easel painting into the 21st century. Regularly released as 20×200.com limited edition prints, his images have appeared several times on the cover of The New Yorker, and there is a blog devoted to his work, Finger Paintings, on newyorker.com. His view of the city and his art are influenced by Woody Allen movies, Edward Hopper paintings, and Arthur Getz illustrations, among others. His first cover for The New Yorker, in June 2009, was the first time a smartphone-created image made the cover of a magazine. His work was featured in publications such as The New York Times, 7×7, or The Guardian, and shown on Good Morning America, Fox News, and all sorts of international outlets.

jorgecolombo.com/

www.chroniclebooks.com

www.newyorker.com

ordan Meijas is a very discreet artist: his site, recently opened, does not reveal any detail of his life. All we know about his training is his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at Parsons The New School of Design, NY. About him only speaks his graphic work, where we can recognize his connection with authors like Edward Hopper and David Hockney, and trace a photographic sensitivity in the structure and composition of the image. A different character, linked to their nature and subject, emerges from his drawings and watercolors, in which the technical mastery is a tool to express a subtle sensuality. Jordan lives in New York City, United States.

http://jordanmejias.com/

osyln Lieb works on during a dance class therapy for Parkinson’s at the Hubbard Street Dance Center. The two things that have brought Michael and Roslyn Lieb closer together couldn’t be more different: Parkinson’s disease and dance, one slowly taking away, the other giving back in ways they never imagined. After tremors in his right arm and leg 11 years ago led to Michael Lieb’s diagnosis with the debilitating brain disease, his wife became his caretaker. But two years ago, she developed a tremor, too. The diagnosis: Parkinson’s. “I couldn’t believe it. It seemed incredible to me that we both should have the disease,” he said. “It came as a real shock, a real downer. No one in either of our families has Parkinson’s,” she said. “It’s come out of the blue for both of us.” Now retired, the couple still love to read, go the symphony and opera, and get together often with family and friends. Once a week, they head to an unusual Chicago dance class tailored for Parkinson’s patients. A nurse first recommended the Hubbard Street dance classes three years ago, and Michael Lieb figured he had nothing to lose. His wife went along – first to help Michael, now to benefit herself, too. The tremors and stiff, awkward movements of Parkinson’s hardly seem compatible with dancing. But exercise is sometimes recommended for Parkinson’s patients, to improve flexibility, and brain specialists are investigating if dance offers something more. For the Liebs, the answer is clear. “It just lifts the spirits,” said Roslyn Lieb, 69. “It does transport us, to a different planet where Parkinson’s doesn’t matter so much.

We check our Parkinson’s at the door and we’re all one community, mutually supportive and we dance together,” said her 71-year-old husband. “It’s just a marvelous experience.” The free classes just west of downtown Chicago are offered by an internationally known troupe whose performances blend modern dance, jazz and ballet. Sarah Cullen Fuller, who danced with Hubbard Street for seven years, launched the classes three years ago, borrowing the idea from the Mark Morris Dance Group in New York. The classes have grown from half a dozen people to sometimes as many as 30 or more. Students include former educators, scientists, doctors “and everything in between,” Fuller says.

These dancers wouldn’t be mistaken for Baryshnikov, Martha Graham or even the amateurs on TV’s “Dancing with the Stars.” But their moves are just as stirring, in a less showy, poignant way. Some are in wheelchairs or can barely move without their partners’ help. During a recent class, a man stood behind his wife’s chair, leaning down to gently stroke her immobile arms in time with the music.

A pianist with two small drums fills the studio with a steady, soothing beat. Fuller leads students through basic dance exercises – rhythmic arm-lifting, bending and foot-stomping – sometimes while they’re seated in chairs, sometimes on foot, sashaying in a way with their partners across the dance floor. “They assume that they’re not dancers, whereas I see them as dancers. I don’t see the disease – I try not to. I try not to let it permeate the room. But I also see them working through it and pushing” to find new ways of moving, Fuller said. Michael Lieb is a renowned scholar of the English poet John Milton and was a longtime University of Illinois-Chicago professor; Roz worked as a public interest attorney.

They are less severely affected by Parkinson’s than some of their classmates. Their hands shake when they swing their arms toward the ceiling, and their sometimes halting strides across the floor aren’t as long and graceful as Fuller’s. But when the Liebs face each other in a sort-of do-si-do, smiling and rhythmically shifting their feet, there’s no question that they’re dancing. The class has become a highlight of their week.

Whether the benefits are physical, psychological, or both, Michael Lieb says dancing “has mobilized something in me to make me want to go on, and for as long as it’s effective, I’ll keep doing it.” Parkinson’s involves a loss of brain cells controlling movement. Besides tremors, it can cause rigid, halting walking, slowed speech and sometimes dementia. Symptoms worsen over time and can be treated with drugs but there is no cure. The disease affects about 1 million people nationwide, 6 million globally, according to the National Parkinson’s Foundation. The cause isn’t known but genes are thought to play a role. Dancing, because it’s accompanied by music, may offer benefits beyond other types of exercise for Parkinson’s patients, including socialization for people otherwise isolated by their disease, said Harvard neurology professor Dr. Daniel Tarsy, director of the Parkinson’s disease center at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“When you hear music, it sort of drives the emotional parts of the brain,” he said. That may help bypass damaged brain cells in Parkinson’s patients, making movement easier, he said. Tarsy is researching whether that means a real improvement in brain function. Gammon Earhart, a Parkinson’s researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, led a recently published study showing that twice weekly tango classes seemed to help Parkinson’s patients walk more quickly and with less stiffness than patients who didn’t dance. The Hubbard Street class exercises include tango-esque strides across the dance floor, along with positions borrowed from ballet, and more free-form modern dance moves. Michael Lieb says he used to lack the energy and will to do some of the dance exercises.

He retired from teaching because Parkinson’s stole his stamina, his impulse to share his ideas and “to excite a class without undue shaking,” Lieb said in the subdued, flat-sounding speech that sometimes comes with disease. The couple has been married for 48 years. With her short coifed silver hair, and his glasses and graying beard, they seem dignified yet down-to-earth and philosophical about how the disease is changing their lives. Parkinson’s is forcing them to sell the spacious suburban Oak Park home where they raised two sons and entertained their three grandchildren; they’ve bought a condo where they won’t have to navigate stairs.

“No one knows what the future may hold” and that is what’s most frightening, Roslyn Lieb said, her voice breaking. “I have a goal of dancing at my grandchildren’s weddings.” Together “we represent one unit, one truly healthy person who is becoming more and more unhealthy as time goes on,” her husband said. “But that’s OK. We’re facing up to it and we’re enjoying each other in a way, and loving each other in a way that would have been impossible without the disease.”

By Lindsay Tanner (API)

irst released in theaters in 2004, WTBDWK!? went on to become one of the most successful documentaries of all time. Now distributed in over 30 countries, it has stunned audiences with its revolutionary cinematic blend of dramatic film, documentary, animation and comedy, while serving up a mind-jarring blend of Quantum Physics, spirituality, neurology and evolutionary thought. Its success has spanned a massive extended DVD set (“Down the Rabbit Hole”) a companion book, study groups, a resource outlet (BLEEP Store), and a host of transformational films that continue to appear around the world. Is a radical departure from convention. It demands a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed, not even dreamed of since Copernicus. It’s a documentary. It’s a story. It’s mind-blowing special effects. This film plunges you into a world where quantum uncertainty is demonstrated – where neurological processes, and perceptual shifts are engaged and lived by its protagonist – where everything is alive, and reality is changed by every thought.

Amanda, a divorced photographer, finds herself in a fantastic Alice-in-Wonderland experience when her daily, uninspired life literally begins to unravel, revealing the cellular, molecular and even quantum worlds which lie beneath. Guided by a Greek Chorus of leading scientists and mystics, she finds that if reality itself is not questionable, her notion of it certainly is. Stunning special effects plunge you into a world where quantum uncertainty is demonstrated – where Amanda’s neurological processes, and perceptual shifts are engaged and lived – where everything is alive, and reality is changed by every thought.

This film gives voice to the modern day radical souls of science, making them the true heroes of our day as they conquer and map the greatest uncharted territory yet – man’s consciousness itself. It is part documentary, part story, and part elaborate and inspiring visual effects and animations. The protagonist, Amanda, played by Marlee Matlin, finds herself in a fantastic Alice in Wonderland experience when her daily, uninspired life literally begins to unravel, revealing the uncertain world of the quantum field hidden behind what we consider to be our normal, waking reality. For more information visit the link below.

www.whatthebleep.com

eeping the neck warm is an important part of staying well for Italians. Many Italians, it seems, are prone to a particularly wide range of winter illnesses, helped apparently by an in-depth knowledge of human anatomy. More than a decade living in this country has led me to a shocking conclusion. Being Italian is bad for your health. As winter draws in, those around me are suffering from a range of distinctly Italian ailments, that make our limited British colds and flus sound as bland as our food. As I cycle around the medieval streets of my adoptive home town of Bologna, I smile to myself, marvelling at the fact that I am still wearing a light-weight jacket at this time of year. No translation. My Italian counterparts are less fortunate. They have their woolly scarves and quilted coats out and are rubbing their necks, complaining of my favourite mystery Italian malady “la cervicale”. Italians can tell you if the pain is in their stomach or intestine… but to us it is all just ‘tummy ache’” …”Soffro di cervicale (I suffer from cervicale),” they tell me, making it sound particularly serious. Most people over the age of 30 seem to have the condition, but I am still at a loss as to what exactly it is and how to translate it. I have looked it up in the dictionary and found “cervical” – an adjective referring to the cervical vertebrae, those little bones in the back of your neck – but as an ailment, there is simply no English translation. We do not have it! The British also do not seem to have the sort of exceptional knowledge of their own anatomy which Italians have. Benefits of ignorance. Soon after I moved here, I remember a friend telling me he was not feeling very well. “My liver hurts,” he said. I have since been assured by doctors that you cannot actually feel your liver, but what really struck me was the fact that he knew where his liver was. Could knowledge of anatomy be bad for your health? We British, in contrast, are a nation staggeringly ignorant of our anatomy. Italians can also tell you if the pain is in their stomach or intestine – and can even specify whether it is colic or colitis – but to us it is all just “tummy ache”.

Yet although I should feel embarrassed about my inability to point out the exact location of my gall bladder, I am not. Why? Because I think it makes me healthier. After years of first-hand experience of the delicate Italian constitution, I have come up with a theory about why we British are so much sturdier. If you cannot name it, you cannot suffer from it. If you do not know where it is, it cannot hurt you. Among my Italian friends I am considered something of an immuno-superhuman. I can leave the gym sweaty to have my shower at home and not catch a chill en route. I can swim after eating and not get congestion or cramp. I can walk around with wet hair and not get “la cervicale”. I even brag about it. At restaurants I will say: “Let me sit in the draught. I’ll be fine. I’m English.” ‘Mustn’t grumble’. I ran my theory past a Sicilian psychoanalyst and he said I had a point. For example, the British do not have a term for a “colpo d’aria”. It literally translates as a “hit of air” and seems to be incredibly dangerous for Italians. They can get one in their eye, their ear, their head or any part of their abdomen.

To avoid getting a colpo d’aria, until at least April, they must never go out without wearing a woollen vest, known as a “maglia della salute” (a shirt of health). British mums hold their kids’ jackets so they will not get hot and sweaty while they run around and play. In contrast, the parks here in Italy are filled with pint-sized, quilted Michelin men, zipped up to their noses to stop the air getting in and hitting them. Italians are brought up to be afraid of these health risks, while our ignorance of their very existence makes us strong and fearless. It is a question of etiquette too. We are a nation that “mustn’t grumble”, trained from an early age that the only answer to “How are you?” is “Fine, thank you.” Our vocabulary reflects this. Whether we have had a cold or spent six weeks in intensive care, we will tell you we have been “a bit poorly”. ‘Change of season’ But last week I experienced a moment of panic. I woke up feeling weak and nauseous.

Correct me if I am wrong, but have you ever heard a British person complain they are suffering from ‘heavy legs’?  What if years in the country had changed my constitution and I too was suffering from another common Italian health hazard, “the change of season”? I tried to convince myself that lack of sleep was to blame, but I was not certain. Later that day, I bumped into a neighbour and confessed that I was feeling “a bit poorly”. “Ooh,” she said, looking concerned. “I went to the doctor yesterday and he told me there’s a 48-hour stomach flu going around.” Then her face brightened up. “But don’t worry, you’re English so it’ll only last 24 hours for you!” And suddenly – superhuman status restored – I felt a whole lot better.

By Dany Mitzman (www.bbc.co.uk )

he Austrian photographer Manfred Kielnhofer develops a new sort of act photographs. Therefore he builds a water plate in his studio, where he can take photos of models sitting or lying likely on a mirror. Kielnhofer is working with the camera like a sculptor. With the human body shapes he creates sculptures in the end les universum.  One photograph has been printed in the Kronen Zeitung. He developed the concept of the Light Art Biennale Austria 2010 together with Martina Schettina. Manfred Kielnhofer was born in Haslach an der Mühl, Austria. He is self-taught and works with many different mediums. He works in painting, film, photography, installation, performance and sculpturing. His work usually concerns the human figure and its different forms and movements. The human form is used as a tool, either on a canvas or in a sculpture. “The focus of my art is the peculiarities of the human nature. As an artist, the natural form and movement of the human body poses me a great challenge. The different perspectives and points of view is what I aim to capture and display in my work and foresee it my personal touch.” Visit Kielnhofer’s site at the link below.

www.kielnhofer.com
www.www.fotopark.at   

f you do a lot of gardening or DIY and are frequently carting your tools and trimmings back and forth – this clever, compactable carrier is bound to be a big help. Called the Heavy Duty Foldaway Utility Cart, it will save your back as well as numerous trips to the shed or storage closet and features a patented accordion frame that makes storage easy – folding down to 10 percent of its original size in seconds. With a length of 44-inches and a width of 24-inches when unfolded, this utility cart will easily accommodate large gardening tools such as shovels, rakes and hedge shears, while its solid rubber swiveling wheels make for great maneuverability – effortlessly rolling across grass, dirt and even wood chips. With the ability to cart up to 150 lbs of gear, yet measuring only 8.5-inches deep when folded – the Heavy Duty Foldaway Utility Cart requires little space (unlike a wheelbarrow), will help you save time and effort when working around the home and is available also from Hammacher Schlemmer for $149.95.

s part of an emerging international trend to try to ‘civilize the Internet’, one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties–the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime–is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention’s intended levels of intrusiveness. Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Moreover, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom are amongst those who have ratified within the last year. However, among non-European countries, only the U.S. has ratified the Treaty to date, making Canada and Australia’s efforts unique. The Treaty has not been harmless, and both Australia and Canada are fast-tracking legislation (Australia’s lower house approved a cybercrime bill last night) that will enable them to ratify the Treaty, at great cost to the civil liberties of their citizens. Australia’s invasive bill highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the Convention on Cybercrime: the Treaty’s failure to specify proper level of privacy protection necessary to limit the over-broad surveillance powers it grants law enforcement agencies. This creates problems in countries like Australia since, as the Australia Privacy Foundation points out, Australia lacks the legal constitutional safeguards afforded to many other democratic countries: The CoE Convention has to be read within the context that applies in CoE countries – where there are substantial and actionable constitutional protections for human rights. The absence of any such countervailing protection for human rights in Australia makes it completely untenable for the Convention to be implemented in Australia without very substantial additional provisions that achieve a comparable balance.

Bills proposed in Canada (read here and here) are also affected by the Convention’s flaws as they adopt the lowest possible standard of protection against many of the invasive powers they grant. The bills provide law enforcement access to sensitive data on the mere suspicion it might be useful to an investigation. Indeed, at times they leave out the safeguards altogether, as noted in a letter from Canadian privacy scholars and civil society organizations: Tthe legislation will give state agents the power to access …highly sensitive personal information, even where there is no reason to suspect it will assist in the investigation of any offense…What [this] facilitates, simply put, are unjustified and seemingly limitless fishing expeditions for private information of innocent and non‐suspicious Canadians. Gag orders in place of oversight: Cultivating a culture of secrecy. The Convention’s most systemic flaw is that it seeks to impose invasive surveillance powers without legal protections. Aside from failing to specify adequate safeguards, it also leaves out the types of oversight mechanisms necessary to ensure its broad powers are not abused. Worse, the Convention takes active steps to reduce oversight and transparency by calling for limitations on when individuals can and cannot be notified that they are being surveilled upon.

The Australian bill even criminalizes any attempt to disclose the fact that the powers it grants to law enforcement have been used to spy on an individual. These gag orders will prevent anyone from disclosing the existence and content of interception warrants, all but ensuring innocent individuals will never know their civil liberties have been violated: …it should be possible for individuals to find out that their communications have been subject to a preservation order or disclosed to law enforcement agencies once there is no longer any prejudice to an ongoing investigation. Nigel Waters, Australia Privacy Foundation, Parliamentarian hearing on the Cybercrime Bill. Proposed Canadian legislation also paves the way to blanket and perpetual gag orders that will apply by default to the most invasive of the seizure powers it authorizes. These gag orders can insulate abuses of power –when innocent people are surveilled for no good reason–and they will never find out nor will be able to challenge the abuse of their rights, even in situations where there is no longer any risk to an ongoing investigation. The far-reaching powers this legislation puts in place, if adopted at all, should be accompanied by equally far-reaching oversight regimes, not gag orders. Instead of preventing abuses from ever seeing the light of day, individuals should be notified when they have been surveilled, and the extent, nature and frequency of such surveillance must be subject to rigorous external oversight. Tamir Israel, staff attorney, Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic. Blanket gag orders are strongly disfavored under U.S. law, and at least one U.S. court of appeals has found a similar gag order provision partially unconstitutional. A provision of the PATRIOT Act permitted the government to obtain electronic communication transaction records from an Internet Service Providers without a court order. The law imposed a gag order on “National Security Letter” recipients, with extremely limited judicial review that required courts to accept the FBI’s assertions as true and placed the burden on the ISP to challenge the gag order after it had been issued.

As EFF argued, such gag orders stifle free expression, and without any judicial oversight, the government was free to do what it wanted. The court agreed that the gag order provision was unconstitutional as written, but it construed the gag rules narrowly so as to pass First Amendment muster. The court found that the U.S. Justice Department could adopt additional procedures to cure the remaining defects—a result that EFF disagrees with because it is Congress’s job to write laws. Countries are also using the Convention to put in place powers aimed at forcing service providers to store customer information for extended periods of time. While the Convention itself foresees targeted preservation orders in scenarios where there is a reason to believe the information would otherwise be vulnerable to loss or modification, Australian and Canadian bills ignore this important limitation. Also, while the Convention envisions a distinction between orders forcing service providers to preserve data they have already collected and orders aimed at forcing service providers to intercept and record data in real time, the misuse of proactive or ‘ongoing’ preservation orders aims to undermine this distinction. In the U.S. and in Canada, for example, there have been cases where preservation powers have been misused to proactively compel service providers to retain data such as email or text messages that are not yet in their possession or control. Proactive preservation force service providers to record data they would never have otherwise retained, effectively bypassing legal protections in place for real-time electronic interceptions. As the U.S. DOJ notes in its manual on seizing electronic communications: …should not be used prospectively to order providers to preserve records not yet created. If agents want providers to record information about future electronic communications, they should comply with the electronic surveillance statutes discussed in Chapter 4. Instead of attempting to avoid such problems, the Australian bill embraces this confusion, and expressly grants law enforcement the right to order ‘ongoing preservation’. This, combined with the complete lack of any obligation to ensure preservation orders are narrowly targeted to capture relevant data at risk of deletion, opens the door to blanket retention orders aimed at real-time interception of communications services on a mass scale: The Australian law, for example, is phrased in such broad terms that it could be applied indiscriminately, without any assurance that it will only be used to preserve data that is at risk of being destroyed:

The Bill could require an Internet Service Provider to preserve all stored communications (e.g. traffic and content data) for a telecommunications service (e.g. email, text messaging, mobile phone) for a specified period of time. Unless our concerns about the meaning of a ‘service’ are addressed, then under an ongoing domestic preservation notice, a Commonwealth agency could arguably request that a major carrier such as Telstra or Optus, preserve all emails used on its service for a 30 day period. Australia Privacy Foundation Submission to the Parliament. The proposed Canadian legislation also fails to ensure preservation demands will be used in a targeted manner and is likely to lead to voluntary retention of personal information that would not otherwise have been kept by telecommunications service providers. Convention premised on outdated concepts of online data. The flaws inherent in the Convention itself are exacerbated by the fact that it was drafted over ten years ago and much has changed since then. The Convention was premised on the notion that ‘traffic data’ (data generated by computers as a by-product of online interactions) is ‘less sensitive’, and so should be more readily accessible to law enforcement.

That was then, and this is now: Today’s ‘traffic data’ can include such sensitive information as your otherwise anonymous online identity or your social network of contacts. Mobile companies and our Internet services providers are now recording our whereabouts at every moment, and we are leaving far more detailed footprints that reveal sensitive information of our daily lives. Sensitive data of this nature warrants stronger protection, not an all-access pass. Other things have changed in the online environment as well. The ongoing move towards cloud computing means that more and more of our information will be stored online. Nowadays, countless millions are trusting web-based email services such as Google Gmail to store years worth of private correspondence, and cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Docs store your most private documents. The Treaty could not envision this reality when it was drafted in 2001. Ratifying the Cybercrime treaty would introduce not just one bad Internet law into each country’s lawbook but invite the enforcement of all the world’s worst Internet laws. Australia and Canada should hold this invasive treaty at bay.Governments must now think carefully about what the Treaty’s increased law enforcement powers will mean for citizen rights in this new digital context.

www.eff.org