By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS | 12 August 2024 (IDN) — Amid strong protests from a coalition of over 110 human rights groups and civil society organizations (CSOs), the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime adopted—by consensus on August 8—a global cybercrime treaty.
Described as “broad in scope” with insufficient human rights safeguards, the treaty threatens to expand government surveillance and facilitate cross-border abuses, says Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The treaty, which goes before the 193-member UN General Assembly later this year, needs to be ratified by 40 countries to enter into force.
In a rare gesture, the US has extended its support—with reservations—to the resolution initiated and driven by Russia.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Senior US Administration Official told reporters on August 9, “cybercrime is one of the biggest challenges of our time that affect every American citizen as well as citizens around the globe, and it’s not a threat that any of us can battle alone, and addressing it requires digital solidarity”.
“We’ve done over two years of dialogue and eight rounds of negotiations, and now the Ad Hoc Committee reached the last stage of the process to develop a UN cybercrime convention.
“This is a process that began about five years ago as basically a Russian-driven initiative, which was aimed at pushing an authoritarian approach to control of the internet; but as a result of our efforts together with our key partners and allies, the process went and was transformed into a negotiation that belongs to all UN Member States,” he pointed out.
“We determined early on that we could engage to positively shape a transparent and inclusive treaty negotiation process, and working with a lot of small- and medium-sized states was also critical. And together we worked to ensure that the convention provides essential protections for human rights. That was a very large part of our work.”
Deborah Brown, deputy technology and rights director at Human Rights Watch, warned that the treaty will be a disaster for the human rights of people around the world.
“Member countries have created an unprecedented surveillance tool without adequate safeguards.”
She said the treaty will effectively be a legal instrument of repression against journalists, activists, and others across the world’s borders. Governments should take their human rights obligations seriously and reject signing or ratifying this treaty.
Asked for a comment, Florencia Soto Niño, Associate Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, said on August 9 it is a draft convention and expected to be adopted by the General Assembly later this year.
“It would be the first global legally binding instrument on cybercrime, and is the result of a five-year effort by UN Member States with the input of civil society, academic institutions and the private sector.”
“So, you know, this was very much a UN Member State-led effort. And so, we’ll let Member States speak to that. But I think it’s good. We welcome the fact that they were able to pass this draft convention and we’ll see what happens at the General Assembly,” she said.
Elaborating further, the US official said: In a big step forward, Member States are now empowered to decline mutual legal assistance requests that discriminate on the basis of sex, race, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, or political opinion.
“And we worked with over 100 like-minded countries to adopt a convention that tracks very much with the longstanding rights-respecting framework set out by the Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, which is seen as the gold standard of international cybercrime cooperation, and reflects U.S. and like-minded shared values and interests, including, as I noted, strong provisions to safeguard human rights, which in this convention are unprecedented in a UN criminal justice convention.”
Budapest Convention
Just like in the Budapest Convention, all parties to this convention will have to criminalize, of course, cybercrimes, like the intentional, unauthorized access to computer systems; illegal interception of electronic data; and intentional, unauthorized sale of passwords and other access devices. This will help ensure that we can hold cyber criminals accountable anywhere in the world.
He said: It also goes further than any existing international instrument through its ground-breaking provisions to protect children online, including a specific article criminalizing the solicitation and grooming for the purpose of committing a sexual offence against a child.
“So, we see this convention as a means to expand global law enforcement cooperation and providing as well—and this was an important part of the draft treaty, which is an additional basis for technical assistance, as many small and medium countries will need assistance to implement and to strengthen their ability to fight cybercrime.”
The convention requires critical safeguards for the use of domestic powers when providing mutual legal assistance to other parties. Those parties that try to utilize the convention to suppress human rights or fundamental freedoms—including the freedom of expression, conscience, opinion, and peaceful assembly noted in the document – will be transgressing their binding legal obligations under the convention.
“To be clear, the United States will continue to strongly condemn and work to combat the persistent human rights abuses that we see around the globe by governments who misuse and abuse cyber-criminal laws and other statutes and tools to target human rights defenders, journalists, dissidents, and others. By supporting consensus for this convention, we will be better placed to ensure it will not enable such abuses.
“How the treaty is interpreted and implemented will also shape its impact. We’re going to continue to engage on the convention, working to ensure that its protections and safeguards are universally understood and adhered to,” the official added.
Asked about the reservations from human rights and civil society organizations, the US official said: “A very good question. We sought to find—to achieve a balance, and we felt that we got to a balance between authorities for law enforcement and human rights.”
“And I think it’s important to understand that this does not open up the floodgates of automatic sharing of information, and that’s something that we’re seeking to convey. If a country makes a request for information or is trying to, you know, in some cases, go after someone, et cetera, we have built in barriers and elements that allow countries to say no.
“And that’s why it was so important to have what we call the human rights and additional safeguards built into every single aspect of the cooperation of procedural powers, et cetera so that, you know, abuse of it could be stopped.
“And I think it’s critical to know that the devil is in the details of how one can say and a country can say no. And also, I refer back to Article 36 to protect information, you know, data privacy. So, there’s a slight misperception that, again, I repeat, that the flood gates of automatic evidence sharing have been opened up. Absolutely not. It has to be done under certain procedures that are very specific with all these additional barriers that I noted before there is any consideration of a request for information, et cetera.
“And that’s a point that I will keep repeating. And as I said, as far as the U.S. concern, we’ve achieved – we believe we’ve achieved this balance. Nothing is forecast in terms of, you know, our Congress has to review it, obviously, and to go through all the procedures. So, this doesn’t say it’s an automatic signing by the U.S,” he declared. [IDN-InDepthNews]
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