Human Rights Groups Raise Alarm Over UN Cybercrime Treaty
upstart writes:
Let's go through all the proposed problematic powers, starting with surveillance and censorship:
Special report United Nations negotiators convened this week in Vienna, Austria, to formulate a draft cybercrime treaty, and civil society groups are worried.
"We are here for the fifth session on the negotiations of this new treaty on cybercrime, which will have the potential to drastically redraft criminal law all around the world," said Thomas Lohnninger, executive director of Austria-based tech policy group Epicenter.works, in a media briefing on Thursday about the treaty negotiations.
"It represents a tectonic shift because of its global nature when it comes to the cross border access to our personal information."
The UN Cybercrime Treaty, to the extent it gets adopted, is expected to define global norms for lawful surveillance and legal processes available to investigate and prosecute cybercriminals. And what has emerged so far contemplates [PDF] more than 30 new cybercrime offenses, with few concessions to free speech or human rights.
[...] Katitza Rodriguez, policy director for global privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained that current cross-border cybercrime cooperation comes from the Budapest Convention, negotiated in 2001, by member states at the Council of Europe.
Russia, however, Rodriguez said, has objected to the convention for infringing state sovereignty by allowing other nations to investigate cybercrimes in its jurisdiction. So in 2017, Russia proposed negotiating a new treaty, and in 2019 the UN adopted a resolution to do so, backed by Russia, Cambodia, Belarus, China, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela.
The US and members of the European Union opposed the proposal citing concerns about lack of human rights protections. Nonetheless, Rodriguez said, Russia pushed its proposal forward and the UN opened negotiations just days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
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