Since the new UN cybercrime treaty began to take shape in 2022, EFF has been fighting on behalf of users to make sure robust human rights safeguards and rule of law standards are the basis of any final product.
There’s a lot at stake—the proposed UN cybercrime treaty has the potential to rewrite criminal laws around the world, adding new offenses and creating new police powers for both domestic and international investigations, and implicating the rights of billions of people worldwide.
Our push for human rights safeguards in the UN treaty follows a campaign since 2013 to strengthen human rights protections in government investigative powers. In 2017 that effort led us to advocate for changes (through submissions and testimony) in the now-approved Council of Europe’s Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Cybercrime Convention. The Protocol is another instrument, approved on May 2022, expanding cross-border access to potential evidence in criminal investigations.
We raised concerns that the Protocol not only fails to require adequate oversight, but even creates government powers that bypass existing accountability mechanisms. Unfortunately, our core concerns about weak privacy standards in the Protocol
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