A new draft of a controversial United Nations cybercrime treaty has heightened concerns expression that dissent will be criminalized by a treaty that creates extensive surveillance powers.The proposed 'comprehensive international convention,' originally aimed at combating cybercrime, has morphed into an expansive surveillance treaty, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world.“This new draft not only disregards but also deepens our concerns, empowering nations to cast a wider net by accessing data stored by companies abroad, potentially in violation of other nations’ privacy laws. It perilously broadens its scope beyond the cybercrimes specifically defined in the Convention, encompassing a long list of non-cybercrimes,” the EFF wrote in an online article.“This draft retains the concerning issue of expanding the scope of evidence collection and sharing across borders for any serious crime, including those crimes that blatantly violate human rights law. Furthermore, this new version overreaches in investigating and prosecuting crimes beyond those detailed in the treaty; until now such power was limited to only the crimes defined in article[s] 6-16 of the convention.”The EFF argued against a controversial provision that allowed states to compel employers or employees to undermine security measures. The organization believes this poses a threat to encryption.“We are deeply troubled by the blatant disregard of our input, which moves the text further away from consensus. This isn't just an oversight; it's a significant step in the wrong direction,” the EFF writes.Deborah Brown, Human Rights Watch’s acting associate director for technology and human rights, called the convention “a menace in the making” and said it was “primed to facilitate abuses on a global scale.”“But instead of sticking to the task at hand, fostering global expertise and cooperation in cybercrime, the proposed treaty seeks expansive powers to investigate virtually any imaginable criminal offence, even if no technology is involved at all,” Brown wrote.“This misguided approach will facilitate cross-border repression. And it will make it more difficult to investigate actual cybercrime.”Brown, who wrote his comments in mid-October, already anticipated the expansion of crimes the new draft laid out on November 28.“A gravely concerning tradeoff package is emerging that would criminalize a relatively narrow set of offences in exchange for international cooperation on any activity a government criminalizes domestically that carries a penalty of at least three or four years in prison. This approach sacrifices human rights in an effort to manufacture consensus,” she wrote.“Governments should reject any such tradeoff and ensure that this treaty elevates, rather than sacrifices, our most fundamental rights.”The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, through the Organized Crime and Illicit Trafficking Branch, Division for Treaty Affairs, serves as Secretariat for the Ad Hoc Committee in charge of negotiations.The negotiations, which began February 28 2022, have been marked by ongoing disagreements between governments on the treaty’s scope and on what role, if any, human rights should play in its design and implementation.Governments will hold closed-door talks December 19 and 20 in Vienna to try to reach consensus on what crimes to include in the treaty. The draft will be considered at the final negotiating session in New York at the end of January, after which the treaty is supposed to be finalized and adopted.
A new draft of a controversial United Nations cybercrime treaty has heightened concerns expression that dissent will be criminalized by a treaty that creates extensive surveillance powers.The proposed 'comprehensive international convention,' originally aimed at combating cybercrime, has morphed into an expansive surveillance treaty, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world.“This new draft not only disregards but also deepens our concerns, empowering nations to cast a wider net by accessing data stored by companies abroad, potentially in violation of other nations’ privacy laws. It perilously broadens its scope beyond the cybercrimes specifically defined in the Convention, encompassing a long list of non-cybercrimes,” the EFF wrote in an online article.“This draft retains the concerning issue of expanding the scope of evidence collection and sharing across borders for any serious crime, including those crimes that blatantly violate human rights law. Furthermore, this new version overreaches in investigating and prosecuting crimes beyond those detailed in the treaty; until now such power was limited to only the crimes defined in article[s] 6-16 of the convention.”The EFF argued against a controversial provision that allowed states to compel employers or employees to undermine security measures. The organization believes this poses a threat to encryption.“We are deeply troubled by the blatant disregard of our input, which moves the text further away from consensus. This isn't just an oversight; it's a significant step in the wrong direction,” the EFF writes.Deborah Brown, Human Rights Watch’s acting associate director for technology and human rights, called the convention “a menace in the making” and said it was “primed to facilitate abuses on a global scale.”“But instead of sticking to the task at hand, fostering global expertise and cooperation in cybercrime, the proposed treaty seeks expansive powers to investigate virtually any imaginable criminal offence, even if no technology is involved at all,” Brown wrote.“This misguided approach will facilitate cross-border repression. And it will make it more difficult to investigate actual cybercrime.”Brown, who wrote his comments in mid-October, already anticipated the expansion of crimes the new draft laid out on November 28.“A gravely concerning tradeoff package is emerging that would criminalize a relatively narrow set of offences in exchange for international cooperation on any activity a government criminalizes domestically that carries a penalty of at least three or four years in prison. This approach sacrifices human rights in an effort to manufacture consensus,” she wrote.“Governments should reject any such tradeoff and ensure that this treaty elevates, rather than sacrifices, our most fundamental rights.”The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, through the Organized Crime and Illicit Trafficking Branch, Division for Treaty Affairs, serves as Secretariat for the Ad Hoc Committee in charge of negotiations.The negotiations, which began February 28 2022, have been marked by ongoing disagreements between governments on the treaty’s scope and on what role, if any, human rights should play in its design and implementation.Governments will hold closed-door talks December 19 and 20 in Vienna to try to reach consensus on what crimes to include in the treaty. The draft will be considered at the final negotiating session in New York at the end of January, after which the treaty is supposed to be finalized and adopted.
