{"id":249963,"date":"2023-12-11T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=249963"},"modified":"2023-12-07T06:28:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T06:28:01","slug":"the-un-is-threatening-privacy-under-pretense-of-new-cybercrime-treaty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/12\/the-un-is-threatening-privacy-under-pretense-of-new-cybercrime-treaty\/","title":{"rendered":"The UN Is Threatening Privacy under Pretense of New Cybercrime Treaty"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Trojan Horse <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Dec 2023 – <\/em>The US digital rights group EFF is describing<\/a> the latest UN Cybercrime Treaty<\/a> draft as \u201ca significant step backward\u201d and a case of \u201cperilously broadening its scope beyond the cybercrimes specifically defined in the convention, encompassing a long list of non-cybercrimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This \u201cdance\u201d \u2013 with some reported progress, for things to then again get worse \u2013 is not exactly new in the now lengthy process of negotiating the document, amid criticism not only from observers among the involved rights non-profits, but also UN member-countries.<\/p>\n

EFF is also convinced that these latest developments are not accidental, i.e., a case of oversight, but rather an essentially purposeful wrong step that diminishes chances of the treaty, once\/if adopted being the result of proper consensus.<\/p>\n

When it all started, the Treaty was presented as a \u201cstandardized\u201d manner for the world to combat cybercrime.<\/p>\n

What has been happening in the meanwhile, though, is a seemingly never-ending stream of additions and expansions of the document\u2019s original powers, to the point where it has now, in the words of EFF, \u201cmorphed into an expansive surveillance treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major concern is what EFF calls possible overreach as national and international investigations are carried out. And instead of improving on these concerns, the new draft is said to have held on to past controversial rules, only to add even more.<\/p>\n

This time, it\u2019s in the form of \u201callowing states to compel engineers or employees to undermine security measures, posing a threat to encryption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically, the UN\u2019s newest version of the proposal, if adopted, would mean that data that is located abroad could be accessed even if that violated the host nation\u2019s privacy protections.<\/p>\n

In these portions that are of grave concern to rights groups, the draft builds on previous contentious provisions, namely, broadening the scope of cross-border investigations (collection and sharing of evidence) so that it includes any crime deemed serous \u2013 and that scope includes instances of crimes (whose definition) \u201cblatantly violates human rights law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, these powers are extended, such that even crimes not covered by the previous versions of the treaty can be investigated and prosecuted; hence the allegation of overreach.<\/p>\n

The reason EFF takes all this as a major step back in the tortuous process is the very nature of the disagreements: the key one on which member-countries can\u2019t see eye to eye has to do with the future treaty\u2019s scope; and then there\u2019s the question of whether human rights matter at all in the big picture here.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The latest draft) is primed to facilitate abuses on a global scale, through extensive cross border powers to investigate virtually any imaginable \u2018crime\u2019 \u2013 like peaceful dissent or expression of sexual orientation \u2013 while undermining the treaty\u2019s purpose of addressing genuine cybercrime,\u201d commented Human Rights Watch Associate Director Deborah Brown, adding:<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernments should not rush to conclude this treaty without ensuring that it elevates, rather than sacrifices, our fundamental rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

Didi Rankovic is an online journalist, editor and translator with a career spanning over ten years writing for an English-language website in Serbia. Rankovic is passionate about free and open source tech and is a contributor for <\/em>Reclaim the Net. dragica.rankovic@reclaimthenet.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – reclaimthenet.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Trojan Horse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":249964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[2269,1220,1277,124],"class_list":["post-249963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-cybercrime","tag-privacy","tag-privacy-rights","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249965,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249963\/revisions\/249965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}