WASHINGTON - Reform Government Surveillance released the following statement on the United Nations Cybercrime Convention, recently approved by the UN Ad Hoc Committee for Cybercrime, and headed to the UN General Assembly this fall for consideration:

“The UN Cybercrime Convention approved by the Ad Hoc Committee for Cybercrime raises concerns that it could undermine privacy, human rights, and cybersecurity. While RGS continues to support efforts to improve UN member states’ abilities to investigate serious crimes and facilitate cross-border access to digital evidence, the final text and enforcement structure of the convention lack adequate safeguards to ensure parties adhere to fundamental international standards for human rights, the rule of law, independent oversight, and transparency, which could make the digital ecosystem less secure. 

The final text could enable parties to demand the cooperation and assistance of other countries in conducting overbroad surveillance. It could be used by countries that lack sufficient rule-of-law safeguards to impede the critical work of journalists, human rights defenders, and cybersecurity researchers by introducing risks of criminal liability, and jeopardizing the security of communications platforms. Finally, international cooperation provisions are broadly scoped with insufficient  accountability mechanisms to challenge problematic requests, which could enable states to use this treaty as a means to conduct unwarranted surveillance.

We encourage UN member states to instead consider redoubling efforts to expand adoption of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, which has already been ratified by more than 75 countries. Doing so would continue to promote greater alignment across national approaches to codification of cybercrimes, and increase cross-border cooperation and assistance in investigating crimes that require access to digital evidence, without introducing new risks to human rights, cybersecurity, and cross-border data flows. 

###