United Nations Cybercrime Treaty Electronic Frontier Foundation

pThe United Nations is currently negotiating a major Cybercrime Convention that has the potential to substantively reshape international criminal law and bolster crossborder police surveillance powers to access and share users data implicating the human rights of billions of people worldwide To coordinate the new Convention the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 74247 in December 2019 and established the Ad Hoc intergovernmental committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communication Technologies for Criminal PurposeppThe Ad Hoc Committee held its first negotiating session on February 28th 2022 aiming to finalize the text by early 2024 amidst contentious negotiations among Members States disagreement about the broad scope of the Treaty The proposed Convention will likely deal with several topics such as substantive cybercrime provisions international cooperation access to potential digital evidence by law enforcement authorities including across borders as well as human rights and procedural safeguards The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNODC through the Organized Crime and Illicit Trafficking Branch Division for Treaty Affairs serves as Secretariat for the Ad Hoc CommitteeppCybercrime is not a new phenomenon and we have already witnessed many examples of anticybercrime laws being used to persecute chill human rights and bring spurious and disproportionate charges against researchers activists and whistleblowers The stakes are high so the treatys scope must be narrow and human rights safeguards must be a priorityppEFF is a registered NGO actively fighting to protect human rights online attending and speaking in meetings via submissions oral statements and joint coalition lettersppThis analysis is based on the latest draft of the UN Cybercrime Treaty Rev 3 or before and highlights its potential risks to free expression and misuseThe draft UN Cybercrime Convention was supposed to help tackle serious online threats like ransomware attacks which cost billions of dollars in damages everyppThe proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty puts security researchers and journalists at risk of being criminally prosecuted for their work identifying and reporting computer system vulnerabilities work that keeps the digital ecosystem safer for everyoneThe proposed text fails to exempt security research from the expansive scope of its cybercrimeppBack to topppCheck out our 4star rating on Charity Navigatorp