If anyone in the European Union tried to protest online the way thousands of anti-war protesters did in the United States last week, they could be branded criminals under a pact recently reached by justice ministers in Brussels.

Last week, protesters against a possible U.S. war against Iraq barraged the White House and Senate offices with tens of thousands of messages by phone, fax and e-mail, as part of what was billed as the first-ever "virtual protest march."

The 15 European ministers signed Friday a so-called framework decision on cybercrime that makes no legal distinction between an online protester and the spammers or cyberterrorists the decision is designed to trap, according to legal practitioners and academics.

The decision forces all 15 Union countries to adopt a new criminal offense - illegal access to, and illegal interference with an information system - and calls on national courts to impose jail terms of at least two years in serious cases.

In its introduction, the decision makes reference to an adopted Council of Europe charter on cybercrime, which defines as criminal activity the sending of unsolicited e-mails designed to hinder the computer system of the recipient of the messages.

"This code appears to catch overt protesters as well as covert criminals," said Leon de Costa, chief of Judicium, a London-based legal consultancy. He added that "it criminalizes behavior which until now has been seen as lawful civil disobedience."

Thomas Vinje of the law firm Morrison Foerster, said, "The code does not ensure that freedom of expression will be respected." He called the text "unbalanced and unfortunate."

"The law is weak and imprecise," said Ulrich Sieber, a professor of law at Munich University. Lawmakers should amend the text, he urged, and add a specific reference to the freedom of expression article in the Convention of Human Rights.

"You could have a problem of interpretation with judges, especially older judges who are unfamiliar with new communications technologies," Sieber said.

"This decision by the justice ministers is nonsense," said Marco Cappato, an Italian member of the European Parliament. The Parliament has only a consultative role, so it cannot force changes to the law.

Cappato said the cybercrime decision was one of many examples of civil liberties in the European Union being compromised in the name of security.

"It suits the national justice ministries to criminalize activities on an EU-wide level," Cappato said. "They seek greater coordination with regard to prosecuting, but there is very little effort made to coordinate legal defense."

Sieber said he believed that the absence of a reference to the right to freedom of expression is an oversight, rather than a deliberate tactic.

An EU diplomat involved in the drafting of the cybercrime code agreed that protection mechanisms in the code are soft. "We still have the opportunity to look at the recitals and make modifications," he said on condition of anonymity.