SleepyEgg

The US government disburses a significant amount of foreign aid to many countries and, in recent decades, that money has been used as a carrot to induce more acceptable behavior from its recipients. In a variety of laws, Congress has required that the executive branch certify that a nation has made progress in areas like human rights or narcotics control before different forms of aid to that country can be approved, including continuation of "most favored nation" trading status. Now, there's a move afoot to extend this protocol to another area of concern: cybercrime.

A bill, going by the title "International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act," has been introduced by a bipartisan group of Senators that includes Utah's Orrin Hatch (R) and New York's Kirsten Gillibrand (D). In its current form, it would require the president to evaluate the state of a given country's efforts to keep cybercrime under control. That evaluation could lead to the identification of "Countries of Cyber Concern," those which aren't doing enough to limit the impact of online crime.