Ransomware attacks are increasing in frequency and have significant cross-border implications for companies throughout the world.  Join us on Tuesday, March 7 at noon ET to hear Michael Buchanan and Alejandro Cruz discuss the implications of ransomware attacks and what you and your clients need to know to address them effectively.  We will discuss effective strategies for responding to cross-border ransomware attacks, how to work effectively with enforcement authorities while protecting your clients’ interests, whether (and if so, how) to pay ransoms without running afoul of economic sanctions, and other issues to keep in mind as you coordinate a response.

After their presentation, we look forward to an open discussion about these issues and other committee business. You can register here.

New Year, New Developments

Dear Friends of the Committee,

This quarter saw a torrent of landmark national prosecutions for crimes against humanity (CAH) and other grave crimes committed in third countries using the principle of universal jurisdiction. These State practices are developments that may help shape customary international law. We hope you enjoy this snapshot in time and welcome your comments and feedback.

Vy Thuy Nguyen,
Vice-Chair, Publications
ICL Committee

You can download a PDF of new issue here.

Next ICLC Meeting: Tuesday, November 30, 2021 at 1:00pm ET

Pete C. Chambers will discuss the difficulties and successes of (1) the NATO-led Police Advising Mission, (2) cooperation between law enforcement and prosecution sectors, as well as (3) evidence collection, including battlefield forensics.

Mr. Chambers is a 41-year veteran law enforcement professional, having served at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels of various U.S. law enforcement agencies; as well as having spent the past 12 years serving as a contracted Senior Special Advisor to the U.S. Department of Defense, in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an expert in firearms and explosives.

In 2008 Pete deployed with the U.S. Military as a Law Enforcement Professional (LEP), where he was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah and Ramadi for 16 months; and then with the U.S. Army in Baghdad for an additional 10 months. These deployments included accompanying U.S. military units during combat operations, in the capacity of a subject matter expert in complex criminal investigations. This experience and background allowed LEPs to assist the military identify individuals and terrorist, insurgent, and criminal networks responsible for targeting and attacking U.S. and Coalition Forces along with their Iraqi Defense and Police partners.

Following a 3-year assignment as the LEP Team Lead, at the U.S. Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Ft. Polk. LA; training U.S. military units prior to their deployment to Afghanistan, Pete again returned as an embedded LEP to Afghanistan where he served until late 2020.

Admission to this event is free and open to all. Non-ABA members: please use this online form to contact the ABA International Criminal Law Committee and we get back to you with you the Zoom link information.

Please enjoy the first issue of the ABA International Criminal Law Committee’s Quarterly Newsletter Publication, now available online at https://bit.ly/3mEkGiG.

In this issue:

• Welcome Note from our Co-Chairs Arthur Traldi and Susan Schwartz

• Section and Committee News

• International and Hybrid Criminal Prosecutions

• National Decisions

• Enhanced Cooperation

• Policies and Initiatives

The International Criminal Law Committee will meet on Tuesday, October 26, 2021 at 1 p.m. Eastern to thank our members for their ongoing contributions to the Committee and to discuss our upcoming plans.  Here is our meeting agenda:

1.  Greetings and introductions of old and new members;
2.  Kudos to committee members;
3.  Update on program proposals for Annual Meeting;
4.  Update on Year-in-Review;
5.  Publications update;
6.  Policy proposals and updates;
7.  Social media update;
8.  Monthly meeting programs update; 
9.  Program proposals for LA summer meeting; and
10.  Section membership initiative.

To help ensure security, please register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZArcu6rrz8tGtJCANX7DpnadEd5RcsKrBGH

As soon as you register, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Digital surveillance pervades our society, and new technologies offer more power than ever to track every aspect of our daily lives. The danger of abuse has never been greater. In most countries, there are no effective rules or standards limiting private companies that sell surveillance technology to governments or others.

Excerpt from Letter from the Editor, Sallie Buzbee, explaining why the Washington Post joined the Pegasus Project (July 18, 2021)

PRESENTED BY THE ABA SLD INTERNATIONAL SENIOR LAWYERS COMMITTEE

Speaker:
Natalia Krapiva, Tech-Legal Counsel, Access Now, Berlin, Germany

The Pegasus Project is an international investigative journalism consortium, led by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, that revealed governments’ espionage on journalists, opposition politicians, activists, businesspeople and others, using the private Pegasus spyware developed by the Israeli technology firm NSO Group. Pegasus was marketed for surveillance of “serious crimes and terrorism” to such countries as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Hungary, Turkey, India, and Germany, among others.

In July 2021, the Pegasus Project published their analysis of 50,000 leaked phone numbers selected by NSO clients since 2016.  The consortium was able to identify more than 1,000 people from more than 50 countries, the list included several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials – including cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officers, as well as several heads of state and prime ministers.

More than half of the phones inspected by Amnesty International’s cybersecurity team revealed evidence of the Pegasus spyware, a zero-click Trojan virus that provides the attacker full access to the targeted smartphone, its data, images, photographs and conversations as well as camera, microphone and geolocation. 

Natalia Krapiva will discuss the Pegasus Project and place it within broader efforts to investigate and hold accountable companies like NSO Group and governments that use their services. She will discuss the new and ongoing litigation efforts, domestic and international advocacy, as well as what role lawyers can play in the fight against spyware abuses.

Access Now is a digital rights organization that defends and extends the digital rights of users at risk around the world through technical support, comprehensive policy engagement, global advocacy, grassroots grantmaking, legal interventions, and convenings such as RightsCon. Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline offers real-time, direct technical assistance and advice to civil society groups & activists, media organizations, journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders.

Zoom Meeting Link: americanbar.zoom.us/j/96873328698

(Pre-registration is not required; replay is available to ABA Members only.)

Dear committee members,

Welcome to all of our new members!

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky will speak at our first monthly committee call on September 28, at 1:00pm ET, by Zoom. Dean Chemerinsky will provide an overview of recent decisions in the US Supreme Court.

Erwin Chemerinsky became the 13th Dean of Berkeley Law on July 1, 2017, when he joined the faculty as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law.

Prior to assuming this position, from 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law, and Raymond Pryke Professor of First Amendment Law, at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Before that, he was the Alston and Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University from 2004-2008, and from 1983-2004 was a professor at the University of Southern California Law School, including as the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science. From 1980-1983, he was an assistant professor at DePaul College of Law.

He is the author of fourteen books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. His most recent books are Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights (Norton 2021), and The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State (with Howard Gillman) (Oxford University Press 2020).

He also is the author of more than 200 law review articles. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal, and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.

In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States. In January 2021, he was named President-elect of the Association of American Law Schools.

We are thrilled that Dean Chemerinsky has agreed to make this presentation to our members and hope you can join us.

Sep 28, 2021 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYldOmuqTsoE9FBN9Fbe-4kiH0gOREk1iJH

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Best,

Cyreka, Arthur, Susan
Co-Chairs of the International Criminal Law Committee

Dear members of the International Criminal Law Committee,

The new edition of the ABA International Law Section’s Year In Review has been published, and is available for download on the publication’s website at:

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/international_law/yir2021-v55.pdf

This is YIR Volume #55, a review of the year 2020. The International Criminal Law Committee’s contribution appears on pages 293-310. Please join us in extending our congratulations and appreciation to our contributing authors for this edition: Andrew Boyle, Melissa Ginsberg, and guest author Leila Sadat.

In the meantime, we have already started work on our Committee’s submission for Volume #56!

Best regards,

Beth Farmer and Tim Franklin
International Criminal Law Committee Editors, Year in Review

Dear committee members, Please join us July 27, 2021 at 1:00pm for our final call of the ABA 2020-2021 year. Please join us for an exciting presentation by Edward Y. Kim.  Ed Kim is the co-founder of the firm, Krieger, Kim & Lewin LLP,  where he represents multinational companies and individuals in cross-border disputes, criminal and regulatory enforcement actions, and investigations. Ed’s cases have included complex civil disputes as well as criminal matters involving allegations of securities and financial frauds, antitrust violations, cryptocurrency fraud, healthcare fraud, money laundering, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations. Ed is an accomplished trial lawyer and has personally tried a dozen federal cases and supervised over a dozen more, including numerous high-profile FCPA, fraud, and national security cases. Ed also has briefed and argued numerous appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Ed co-founded the firm after serving for nearly a decade as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where he was an Assistant United States Attorney and supervisor of two units in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Ed has significant experience handling matters involving international enforcement agencies as well as domestic regulatory authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Zoom details below: Topic: July ABA ICL Committee Call Time: Jul 27, 2021 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIld-2hpj4pE92ZAifw4SWbCKJBIgZNkqrs