The landmark draft agreement, called the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, will go before the General Assembly in the fall, where 40 nations must vote to ratify it, per EuroNews. If that happens, it would become “the first global legally binding instrument on cyber crime,” per the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
The document calls for “adopting appropriate legislation, establishing common offences and procedural powers and fostering international cooperation to prevent and combat [cyber crime] more effectively at the national, regional and international levels.” Part of that entails instructing nations to establish domestic laws outlawing certain cyber crimes.
For example, nations would have to make it a criminal offense to intentionally access information and communications technology (ICT) systems “without right.” Nations can, if they wish, choose to narrow this prohibition in certain ways. For example, they’re allowed to only criminalize that kind of access if it is committed with “dishonest or criminal intent."
Nations would also criminalize altering electronic data or using technology to intercept private electronic data transmissions among or within ICT systems, if either of these activities is done intentionally and without right. Other offenses deal with certain activities related to technology-enabled fraud, laundering criminal proceeds and abuse. Nations would criminalize intentionally and without right creating or distributing child sexual abuse material, connecting with children via ICT systems to groom them for abuse, and using ICT systems to distribute sexual images of an adult without consent.
The draft treaty also aims to provide tools for combating a global threat. All that said, however, some detractors argue that it provides too little protection for human rights.
Under the draft treaty, a nation that is investigating a serious crime — one that it would punish with at least four years of imprisonment under its domestic laws — can ask another nation for electronic evidence and request data from Internet service providers, Voice of America noted.
The document includes provisions allowing nations to, if they wish, reject some of these requests for help. For example, nations do not have to give another nation mutual legal assistance if they have grounds for believing that the request was made with intention of “prosecuting or punishing a person on account of that person’s sex, race, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin or political opinions.”
Still, some say the human right protections don’t go far enough.
A Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime blog post warned that the draft treaty does not call for any judicial oversight of the new evidence-collection activities or legal training in how to handle such data. That means the electronic evidence could ultimately prove inadmissible in court, which raises questions about the purpose of the measure.
A recent blog by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) points out that nations vary in what they deem a serious crime. As such, the treaty would enable repressive governments to cooperate on conducting international espionage of political dissidents as well as to curb free speech. For example, countries that deny LGBTQ+ rights might deem it a serious crime to post a rainbow flag on social media, the EFF noted, or a nation might seek to pursue journalists writing articles on leaked human rights violation data. The EFF blog post argued that the treaty should be revised to limit the covered crimes to just cyber crimes, like data breaches and phishing, and to redefine serious crimes as those involving “death, injury or other grave harms.”
“In countries like Russia and China, serious ‘cyber crime’ has become a catchall term for any activity the government disapproves of if it involves a computer,” the EFF wrote.
Meanwhile, some nations disputed human rights-related clauses. The draft says it should not be interpreted as allowing “suppression of human rights or fundamental freedoms, including the rights related to freedoms of expression, conscience, opinion, religion or belief, peaceful assembly and association.” Per Voice of America, Iran sought to remove that clause and Russia objected that the draft treaty was "oversaturated with human rights safeguards.”
In published comments, a U.S. Department of State spokesperson said the U.S. welcomed the adoption of the draft treaty and the new tools for cooperation, while adding that the U.S. would continue to push back against human rights abuses.
“The agreement expands the global fight against cyber crime, which is one of the most pervasive challenges of our time,” the statement says. It also said the U.S. will continue efforts against human rights abuses “by governments who misuse and abuse cyber crime laws and other cyber-related statutes and tools to target human rights defenders, journalists, dissidents, and others.”
