UN Convention on Cybercrime: staying out of the table and fighting for human rights, privacy, and safety
ISOC Switzerland Chapter - Thursday, December 19, 2024The voting in the UN General Assembly that was expected to pass the Draft Convention on Cybercrime, was postponed.
This Draft was the outcome of many years of negotiations which started with a UN resolution initiated in 2019 by Russia, China and other states (such as Iran, Egypt, Sudan, and Uzbekistan) , with 88 votes to 58, and 34 abstentions.
There is a wide consensus that this convention puts in danger human rights, privacy, and safety online, and a large number of human rights and journalists’ associations have officially expressed their criticism of the surveillance pact, including Privacy International, Access Now, the IPI, and European Digital Rights, the umbrella organisation of many European NGOs.
ISOC global in their position article on the UN convention state clearly two major concerns regarding its potential negative impact:
1) Impact on the work of security researchers: As highlighted in this statement from security experts, good faith security research is crucial to ensuring the security of the Internet and preventing cybercrime.
2) Impact on encryption: Article 28.4 on search and seizure of electronic data might be interpreted to allow countries to authorize competent authorities to order the handover of encryption keys or other sensitive information about the security of hardware or software.
Adrienne Fichter, in her article titled “The UN community has negotiated a global surveillance regime — but it could have been worse”, explains in detail all the shortcomings of this convention and the potential impact in the Swiss context.
A recent article (9.Dec 2024) by Lawfare media analyzes the legal language of the Draft Convention and another one by Anja P. Jakobi und Lena Herbst, at the same day, concludes that despite the problems with this convention,
It is, however, unlikely that the draft Convention will fail to pass the GA. Therefore, it seems advisable to accept the treaty with reservations and become a state party to the Convention. Without internal critics, the ‘Conference of Parties’ (CoP), tasked with reviewing and implementing the convention, could develop additional measures and worsen a Convention that at least includes some human rights safeguards. In particular, due to Russia’s and China’s growing influence, rejecting the Convention could pave the way for ‘digital authoritarianism’ in a central UN norm on cyberspace. Still, accepting the Convention requires careful monitoring, not only of the CoP, but also of its results in practice. If reviews of the treaty show that its implementation means compromising human rights and data protection, states should continuously reevaluate whether to stay or leave the treaty, with the Budapest Convention as a remaining fallback option.
The argument of making compromises to “stay at the table of negotiations” have been used also for other critical issues in recent debates among digital rights associations in Switzerland. And although “staying at the table” is a valid argument, for such important threats on fundamental human rights, someone needs to stay out of the table and fight for privacy, self-determination, and safety!
So, we are in a critical moment of this process, and signing the ongoing petition, initiated by the Pirate Party CH, and supported by the ISOC Switzerland Chapter, we can pass the message to policy makers that people care for human rights and privacy:
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