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While Andrew is away this week, different members of the Daily Brief team will take over and keep you informed about the latest human rights news. Today's edition is authored by Jan Kooy.
Diplomats from all over the world are meeting this week to find consensus on a new UN cybercrime treaty. But instead of sticking to the task at hand – fostering global expertise and cooperation in cybercrime – the proposed treaty seeks expansive powers to investigate virtually any imaginable criminal offence, even if no technology is involved at all, write Human Rights Watch’s Deborah Brown and Katitza Rodriguez of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The closed-door negotiations in Vienna are a last-ditch attempt to bridge differences among governments on the treaty’s scope and on what role human rights should play in the treaty design, implementation, and eventual enforcement.
If the diplomats fail, the treaty may end up facilitating cross-border repression and make it more difficult to investigate actual cybercrimes.
The threat from cybercrime is very real. In the last few months alone, cybercrime has disrupted government services by taking down an e-citizen online portal in Kenya, exposing the personal data of 168 million citizens in India, and forcing a California-based healthcare system to close some of its locations.
During negotiations, a potential tradeoff has emerged that would criminalize a relatively narrow set of offences in exchange for international cooperation on any activity a government criminalizes domestically that carries a penalty of at least 3 or 4 years in prison. This approach sacrifices human rights in an effort to manufacture consensus, warn Brown and Rodriguez.
“Governments should reject any such trade-off and ensure that this treaty elevates, rather than sacrifices, our most fundamental rights.”