UN member states launched final negotiations Monday to finalize an international treaty to combat cybercrime, which has been criticized by both human rights advocates and big tech companies.
This future “United Nations Convention against Cybercrime” was born from an initiative by Russia, which in 2017 sent a letter to the UN Secretary General containing a draft treaty in this area.
Two years later, despite opposition from the United States and the Europeans in particular, the United Nations General Assembly created an intergovernmental committee responsible for drafting this treaty.
“We are at the mouth of the port, on Friday August 9, we will dock,” said Faouzia Boumaiza Mebarki, president of this committee at the opening of the session on Monday, noting however that “differences still remain.”
After seven rounds of negotiations, criticism is raining down on the draft text which must be submitted for approval to member states at the end of this final two-week meeting in New York.
Too big
While the latest version “contains some improvements”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “remains concerned about significant gaps, with many clauses falling short of international human rights standards”.
“These gaps are particularly problematic in the context of the already broad use of existing cybercrime laws in some jurisdictions to excessively restrict freedom of expression, target dissenting voices and arbitrarily interfere with the privacy and anonymity of communications,” the UN body wrote in a document submitted to delegations.
The draft text aims to “combat cybercrime more effectively” and to strengthen international cooperation in this area, citing in particular child pornography and money laundering.
But its detractors denounce a much broader scope, too broad, reflected by its subtitle “offenses committed by means of information and communication systems.”
“This treaty could be used as a tool for national and international repression and other human rights violations, including the targeting of journalists, human rights defenders, diasporas, the technology community, civil society, and other marginalized groups,” warned the 40 states of the Freedom Online Coalition, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Mexico and Kenya, in a joint statement.
“Global Surveillance Treaty”
“We should not be mistaken, the treaty presented to the UN for adoption is in fact not at all a treaty against cybercrime. It looks more like a treaty on global surveillance,” warned the head of the NGO Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan.
An unusual alliance, this position is shared by major technology companies, such as Microsoft, which says it prefers “no deal rather than a bad deal.”
“There is a need for more cooperation on cybercrime, for most states, particularly developing countries,” Nick Ashton-Hart, who is leading the delegation of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord organization, which brings together more than 100 companies in the sector, told AFP.
But for him, this could be done via the Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime or the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime.
So without substantial improvement, his organization will call on states not to sign or ratify the treaty.
“And democratic states can expect opposition from the private sector, along the same lines as civil society, if it comes to ratification at the national level,” he warned.
Russia, for its part, defended its vision of the text.
“Excessive attention to the human rights provisions of the convention will significantly harm international cooperation and will actually block work on cooperation between law enforcement agencies of states,” the Russian delegation wrote, accusing the West of using the issue to “politicize discussions.”