Proposed UN cybercrime treaty has evolved into an expansive surveillance tool

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/eff-and-more-100-ngos-set-non-negotiable-redlines-ahead-un-cybercrime-treaty

by laserstrahl • 2 years ago

171 59 2 years ago

eff.org

tleilaxu• 2 years ago

Surprising precisely no one, I suspect.

trackflak2• 2 years ago

Finally someone else will do the window twitching snitching for me.

trackflak2• 2 years ago

All hail our beneficent global bureaucracy! Filled with smart people who care deeply about our freedom and individual wishes. Now if I could just contact one of its accountable elected representatives to voice some concerns...

ThrowawayTestr• 2 years ago

Post this next time someone praises the EU for passing the barest of privacy laws.

przemub• 2 years ago

I can and actually did contact my European Parliament representative with my concerns. ACTA protests were very successful. These people are answerable to their constituents in the same way as in any other representative democracy.

arlort• 2 years ago

Treaties need to be adopted by legislatures, lobby your national executive if you want to influence the text and the legislature if you want to influence its adoption or not.

Also these treaties aren't generally self executing nor enforceable, so you'll also be able to lobby your legislature when they'll be drawing up the implementing acts.

rokkitmensch3• 2 years ago

Epic gaslighting.

grotorea6• 2 years ago

I suspect we should be blaming the diplomats and the national leaders giving them orders, who should be responsible to the people, not the UN bureaucracy or the people who work there that doesn't actually that much decision making power AFAIK.

jocoda• 2 years ago

This is the first time that the tools that make it feasible to impose surveillance at this scale.

The same tools, maybe not as intrusive, could be used to hold these people accountable?

(putting on my conspiracy hat) Hmm, maybe because this has become possible, the media is so flooded with noise. Any signal is drowned out.

kragen• 2 years ago

it's too late, the spy agencies already run the world; this is just consolidating their control

seydor2• 2 years ago

If I were world government i 'd do the same

agilob• 2 years ago

So this all is because of people like you

seydor2• 2 years ago

So , because of average people. There's a centralizing tendency to all government

tomrod2• 2 years ago

Welp, time to reacquaint myself with novel encryption algorithms and modern decentralized networking.

Data science has been fun, but it's all a moot point if our civil liberties are deteriorated.

sgjohnson• 2 years ago

modern decentralized networking

But the internet is already completely decentralized and has been since the 1990s when we switched from EGP to BGP. EGP used to have a single, global "backbone", BGP doesn't.

The only semi-centralized part of the internet are the regional registries, although IANA is still the supreme numbers authority, but they don't care about what you do with your assigned numbers unless you hijack other numbers or acquired yours fraudulently.

pixl973• 2 years ago

You may be confusing what exactly decentralization is referring to in this case.

BGP may be fully decentralized for IP, but if your only providers are your ISP and Amazon then your local industry has consolidated to the point that decentralization of the last mile and services don't matter. Two entities have full control of how your packets get to other people.

The decentralized networking the above poster is talking about is a layer on top of this existing 'polluted' network where your traffic is encrypted in it's own layer and goes to servers/services not controlled by said providers.

The particular problem I have with OPs idea this will give them some measure of privacy or safety. This isn't how law enforcement works. They will bust individual nodes and force the operators to keep them running all while gathering information on users of the network. They'll capture more nodes and unmask users with threat of even longer jail time to those that do not defect.

tenebrisalietum• 2 years ago

Well said, but parent post probably meant "communication applications" instead of "networking."

rokkitmensch3• 2 years ago

Start with GPG, comrade. Personal freedom begins with unmonitored and uninterdictable communications.

incomingpain3• 2 years ago

We are in the middle of the first cyber world war. We have to do something, but the united nations are going to do... well this...

This is obviously being written by those who have been operating in this way for many years.

In the meantime, I will support my country withdrawing from the united nations.

mordae• 2 years ago

In the meantime, I will support my country withdrawing from the united nations.

I don't believe that not talking to others is a solution, to be honest.

incomingpain3• 2 years ago

I don't believe that not talking to others is a solution, to be honest.

Being in the united nations has basically nothing to do with talking to others.

What exactly has the united nations done lately? Did they do anything about the genocide in western china?

Did they do anything about Russia's war in ukraine?

Did they do anything about Palestine's offensive war?

At some point the UN lost their way. My country isn't significant on the world stage anymore, we arent going to fix anything. Best to withdraw.

pixl973• 2 years ago

Ah yes, isolationism, Authoritarians love when countries do that, makes them easier to take over.

incomingpain3• 2 years ago

Ah yes, isolationism, Authoritarians love when countries do that, makes them easier to take over.

Withdrawing from the united nations does not mean by default isolationism. NATO would still exist. Our alliance with EU would still exist. I believe our alliance with brexit still stands as well?

I'm not saying isolationism, I'm saying United Nations doesn't do anything.

titzer• 2 years ago

Every piece of legislation that has anything to do with privacy or surveillance will inevitably be corrupted to make surveillance worse, either directly by inserting or modifying language, or indirectly by interpretation or optimizing right up to the letter of the law, but not the spirit. And then there's the fact that intelligence agencies will just outright lie to oversight bodies. No consequences. We're in a dystopia that still has sunshine, NetFlix, and arguing over trivialities to distract us.

rokkitmensch3• 2 years ago

Right you are, comrade! The lizards have no shame.

MrYellowP2• 2 years ago

I don't know why you're making fun of him, because he's absolutely right.

"Bread & Circus" has been used for a long fucking time already and if you have no knowledge of the history of the CIA, or Mossad, then you should educate yourself.

It's not a conspiracy theory when it's the world we live in. You should definitely feel shame.

zwnow2• 2 years ago

As a non native english speaker I have some trouble understanding this. Is this just another bill that uses cyber secruity as an excuse to pass some bullshit laws?

This is common practice in Germany, so it would not surprise me if that kind off stuff also reached the UN...

TheGeminon• 2 years ago

From my (limited) reading it seems like this is a UN treaty to allow for better co-operation between states when prosecuting/investigating cybercrime.

The main issues I see is that there is little distinction in what constitutes a crime that would fit under the "cybercrime" banner, potentially allowing a state that has e.g. anti-LGBT laws to request assistance in prosecuting that crime by e.g. getting de-anonymized data from a US-based social network.

aa_is_op2• 2 years ago

The super short tl;d is:

This is a treaty proposed by Russia, and heavily supported by the growing number of dictatorships around the world, such as China, the Arab states, and more recently the growing number of African countries, that will effectively allow them to prosecute anyone who says something bad about their countries under vague "terrorism" charges. If a western country refuses, then they can cut off any legal collaboration for any other more serious crimes. Example: UAE says this French national said something bad about their sheik. France must arrest and hand over that guy because they would be breaking an international treaty otherwise, and may be vulnerable to sanctions and UAE (and others refusal) to cooperate in France's legal investigations, such as economic fraud, terrorism, and such. It's basically a cleverly designed document to enforce and give more power to dictators across their borders, and inside other democratic countries.

zwnow2• 2 years ago

Well that is obviously something that will never come through, right? Why would the UN even discuss this?

_fat_santa2• 2 years ago

Here's the problem I see with tackling "cybercrime", most of it happens outside the jurisdiction of western countries. When it comes to things like hacking, selling stolen data, scams you name it, most of it happens in countries where enforcement is either lax or just non-existent.

And "access" here is completely asymmetric, if someone opens up say a scam store in London that victimizes it's visitors in some way, the authorities have access to the business just like the business has access to the residents of London, here the "access" is symmetric as the authorities can just show up and shut down the business and throw the criminal org running it in jail.

With cybercrime though, the criminal has access to the victim, but the authorities do not have access to the criminal. The criminals can victimize folks all day long but besides stern warnings to potential victims, there's nothing the authorities can do. The criminals know this and this is why most of your online scams and cybercrime occurs in places outside the jurisdiction of western states / states that care about this stuff.

A cybercrime bill like this will inevitably be kneecapped by virtue of it's jurisdiction. As a result they won't have any "real" crime to go after and will increasingly go after lower hanging fruit that one could interpert as "crime". So expect the real criminals will still be in business while these agencies will go after folks for saying mean things on the internet that could be construed by a court to be a "crime"

thmsths• 2 years ago

Maybe it's naive, but I wonder if escalating fines then sanctions against countries responsible for a lot of cybercrime could work.

Right now the incentives are all messed up. If citizens from country A lose millions from scammers in country B, country B has little incentive to spend precious resources on making it stop. In some cases it's even worse as country B might be benefiting from the scam.

Telling some countries "we won't let you route calls to our country because a disproportionate amount is scams" might provide an incentive, and if it doesn't it makes the scamming harder. Of course this needs to be weighed against the potential costs.

_fat_santa2• 2 years ago

Maybe it's naive, but I wonder if escalating fines then sanctions against countries responsible for a lot of cybercrime could work.

Unfortunately that gets wrapped in Geopolitics. I'm sure the cybercrime unit will love to issue sanctions against certain countries but the higher ups will never allow that because they need that country as an ally in the region more than they need to stop cybercrime from that country. Ie. bigger fish to fry.

pksebben• 2 years ago

Of course this needs to be weighed against the potential costs.

On both ends. Listening to Darknet Diaries [1] recently with a story on email fraud, and they mentioned that the estimated yearly take for one particular fraud group in Nigeria amounted to roughly a third of Nigeria's GDP. Even if we interpret this as inflated, it's hard to imagine that the Nigerian government is highly motivated to put a stop to that flow of capital.

1 - https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/141/

14• 2 years ago

How can you prove what country a criminal is from? You would have to make vpns and tor illegal so that it is impossible to mask your connection and that will never happen. I believe right now they can sometimes gleam hints as to the source country of malware but it’s not a certainty as of course a smart hacker would take steps to mask their work.

ajb2• 2 years ago

Indeed, cybercrime is cross-border because that makes it difficult to reverse fraudulent transactions. There should simply be an international treaty such that fraudulent transactions crossing a border can be reclaimed from the government of the destination country, leaving them with the problem of reclaiming it within their own country.

ToucanLoucan2• 2 years ago

I mean, one can easily make the argument that this an incredibly rare instance where the global south get to be the exploiters as opposed to the exploited, and online scams could be argued as a "colonialism tax" on the richer, dumber citizens of western nations that are used to a government that at least feigns giving a shit about their security.

I'm not saying that's right, of course, something something two wrongs. I don't condone it but I don't judge them for it either. As with most crime, the answer largely seems to be elevating the communities from which the crime comes, because while there's certainly a non-zero population out there that will just fuck shit up for their own gain, regardless of how harmful and risky it is, numerous studies on the subject and the successful rehabilitation programs in other countries not using a punitive system of justice demonstrate that the vast majority of the time, what "criminals" really need is a legal option to make a decent living. That can require a wide spectrum of things from proper education/skills training for that given person, to environmental or medical help to address untreated mental/physical illnesses, to systemic improvements so jobs pay enough to actually live and are available where people are.

Basically: Our society demands people have money to survive, and most people given a reasonable opportunity to earn money in a pro-social way will do that, because if for no other reason, it's easier and less risky. However if you live in a place where you are denied the opportunity to make that living, what do you expect people to do? Lie down and wait for the cold embrace of death, or start stealing shit? Put in that position I'd tell you exactly what I'd do.

MrYellowP2• 2 years ago

You make little sense. What are they going to do about it?

Digitally lock down everything somehow? Outlaw encryption? Forbid VPNs?

Implement a massive, nation-covering firewall that actually can enforce any of that?

tzs• 2 years ago

Here's an article with a lot more detail about the treaty, and the efforts of Western countries to narrow it and of Russia and China to broaden it [1]

[1] https://therecord.media/consensus-growing-around-cybercrime-...

Proposed UN cybercrime treaty has evolved into an expansive surveillance tool

Related Stories