European Union: Final Draft of Second Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime approved by CoE's Cybercrime Committee

The Cybercrime Committee of the Council of Europe has approved a final draft of the Second Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention), to be sent on to further committees for approval. The Protocol foresees enhanced cooperation between parties on cybercrime and electronic evidence. Following implementation of the Treaty, competent authorities in a ratifying state will be able to request the information needed to identify the owner of domain names registered in the territory of another party state for the purposes of criminal investigation. Further, the competent authorities of a ratifying state will be able to directly request subscriber information from service providers in another party state through the legal basis of the requesting state. Alternatively, the draft Protocol foresees a more streamlined mutual assistance procedure for the disclosure of subscriber information.