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August 9th, 2024
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UN CYBERCRIME TREATY PASSES IN UNANIMOUS VOTE

The United Nations passed its first cybercrime treaty on Thursday in a unanimous
vote supporting an agreement first put forward by Russia.

The passage of the treaty is significant and establishes for the first time a
global-level cybercrime and data access-enabling legal framework. 

The treaty was adopted late Thursday by the body’s Ad Hoc Committee on
Cybercrime and will next go to the General Assembly for a vote in the fall. It
is expected to sail through the General Assembly since the same states will be
voting on it there.

The agreement follows three years of negotiations capped by the final two-week
session that has been underway. 

Russia also supported the draft treaty, which was a surprise given earlier
concerns raised by the country’s representative.

Opponents of the treaty include human rights organizations and big tech
companies.

Both factions have concerns over text that says authorities investigating crimes
in any nation  are entitled to obtain electronic evidence  from other nations as
well as ask internet service providers to hand over data.

There were disagreements on just a couple of parts of the latest text voted on
Thursday, but the final outcome is a treaty that does not significantly change
earlier, controversial versions of the draft agreement, said Raman Jit Singh
Chima, the Asia Pacific Policy Director at the digital freedoms organization
Access Now.

Chima, who was in the room during Thursday’s debate and final vote, said every
attempt to tweak the final draft text was defeated. 

In an interview with Recorded Future News following the vote, he cited concerns
that have been echoed by several other human rights and digital freedoms
organizations.“We think this convention text that has advanced is insufficient
in its human rights commitments,” Chima said. 

“It does not have strong safeguards to prevent misuse of digital investigation
and digital evidence powers in the 21st century,” he added. “It, in fact, would
enable more surveillance and enable data access in a way that undermines
people's trust in computers and in digital technology and directly puts people
at risk.”

Like other human rights and digital freedoms proponents, Chima characterized the
agreed upon treaty as the result of UN member states believing a “bad treaty is
better than no treaty.”

While there are other existing treaties on cybercrime which emanate from
regional bodies — and some that are slightly more international, such as the
23-year-old Budapest Convention — there has previously been no legal framework
which has been debated and accepted by consensus among all UN member states.

The Budapest Convention was not signed by China, Russia, India or Brazil —
countries that are home to significant internet-based criminal organizations.

“One of the complaints about the Budapest convention, or the Council of Europe
treaty, was that it was negotiated by Europeans, and there wasn't any
involvement from the global south or others,” Jim Lewis, director of the
Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, said in an interview Thursday. “They have always said we can't possibly
sign a convention that we didn't help to negotiate.”

“Now we have a global compact that nations have agreed to that lets us move
forward on cybercrime,” Lewis, a former diplomat, added. “This is a global
problem that needs to be addressed so if it can move us forward even a couple
feet, it's progress.”

Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, a career diplomat, represented the U.S. in the
negotiations.

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Tags
 * United Nations
 * UN Cybercrime Treaty
 * Russia
 * Access Now
 * human rights

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Suzanne Smalley

is a reporter covering privacy, disinformation and cybersecurity policy for The
Record. She was previously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop and Reuters.
Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police Department for the
Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in
Washington with her husband and three children.


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