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EFF’s concerns about the UN Cybercrime Convention
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _lvbh 2y ago> Negotiations for this treaty began in 2022, initiated by a controversial proposal from the Russian Federation. I would understand if this was coming from the states but why is the UN even considering such a proposal coming from Russia?
- ViktorRay 2y agoRussia is a member of the United Nations. It is also a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. So it is only natural that the UN would consider proposals from Russia.
- walterbell 2y agoUN cybercrime treaty was unanimously approved by 200 countries this week.
- _lvbh 2y agoWell, that’s depressing. Were EFF recommendations applied?
- walterbell 2y agoEFF tweet, https://x.com/eff/status/1821672613468569628 https://x.com/eff/status/1821672613468569628 Member States traded away existing human rights safeguards to reach a contrived consensus for a treaty that will endanger journalists, dissenters, human rights activists, and every day people around the world. Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110
- brightball 2y agoHow does the Supreme Court handle interpreting of treaty agreements? It seems like the language of the 1st amendment would prevent the US from entering into an agreement that violated it?
- ApolloFortyNine 2y agoThe US doesn't recognize any court as being above itself. Most countries probably don't either, they're supposed to go back home and get it passed in their own country's system.
- tptacek 2y agoNo treaty supersedes the Constitution; in fact, treaties don't even supersede conflicting federal statutes passed after ratification. Article III courts will overturn treaty enabling statute clauses that are mooted by the Constitution or subsequent federal laws.
- jcranmer 2y agoThe short answer: it's really complicated. In a broad stroke, a treaty agreement is roughly akin to Congress passing a law, but the roles of the treaty itself versus enabling laws depends on several factors such as "is the treaty actually a treaty?" As it pertains to your question, the Constitution (and its amendments) are the supreme law of the land, and a treaty stipulation that requires the government to do something unconstitutional would have no legal effect.
- tptacek 2y agoI don't think the EFF has much suction at the level of international diplomacy. Most UN countries, including much of Europe, don't have the basic categorical legal principles much of EFF's argumentation relies on, especially re: free expression and rules of evidence. Fortunately, those same legal principles in the US cannot be overridden by a treaty.
- dannyobrien 2y agoThere has always been a fairly established group of NGOs with similar criticisms at the international level, including EFF (you're more likely to hear these critiques from EFF at HN because ... well, we're a pretty an EFF-adjacent community here.) Unfortunately, the UN mostly works as a venue for governments negotiating with governments, with accredited NGOs having a position of being tolerated in those discussions, but with no real power. Outside of those tolerated NGOs, influence drops even further. (When I was at EFF, we did try to get UN official accreditation, but China would consistently veto it. There are other digital rights groups that have been accepted though, and we worked very closely with those. The full list of NGOs are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_consultative_status_to_the_United_Nations_Economic_and_Social_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_con... )
- tptacek 2y agoYeah, I was only struck by the previous comment's implication that the UN Office of Drugs and Crime might in the ordinary course take and act on feedback from the EFF. Like, it could happen, but it would be very surprising, right? I think it almost doesn't make sense, in that I perceive EFF to be, whether overtly or not, a very American organization with very American public policy views.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoThe other issue is that the EFF is the minority opinion on many, many subjects. Many of the most effective NGOs have a "we agree with you, but this 10% needs to change," which is flexible enough that governments who otherwise wouldn't care pay attention. The EFF isn't like that - for example, the idea of outlawing DRM, while popular among hackers and people here, is a total nonstarter internationally. It's about as effective as hiring the FSF to lecture Microsoft; or hiring PETA to lecture Tyson; or hiring the Amish to lecture you on electrical design. The opinions are so diametrically opposed that it's not even worth considering.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoI looked up who the representatives were from the US and I hadn’t heard of any of the names. The UN website doesn’t have bios or links to more information on those people - just a list of names you can’t scrutinize. It’s a depressing bureaucracy
- throwaway48476 2y agoAs intended.
- briandear 2y agoNon-binding on the U.S. as such a treaty has to be ratified.
- bulatb 2y agoThis thread with all these comments (the ones up when I wrote this) was posted three days ago. Here's a post that referenced it then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41211151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41211151 Why is it back on the front page and posted "5 hours ago"? I'm not implying underhandedness or anything but I'd like to know why this happens. Anyone know? These are the comments it got at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41212594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41212594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210905
- lagniappe 2y agoI suppose you'll find the number of licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop before you get an answer to this that makes any sense. Nonetheless, I do have hope someone will ackshually me into an explanation.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wizzwizz4 2y ago<del>A wizard</del> <ins>dang</ins> did it.
- ziddoap 2y agoSecond chance pool https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 >HN's second-chance pool is a way to give links a second chance at the front page. Moderators and a small number of reviewers go through old submissions looking for articles that are in the spirit of the site—gratifying intellectual curiosity—and which seem like they might interest the community. These get put into a hopper from which software randomly picks one every so often and lobs it randomly onto the lower part of the front page. If it interests the community, it gets upvoted and discussed; if not, it falls off.
- commandlinefan 2y agoLooks like, unsurprisingly, the resolution is more about mandating censorship than it is about curbing actual crime. I'm pretty pessimistic about the future of a free internet - there have been lots of attempts at censorship-resistant protocols, but they require widespread adoption. If they haven't already been adopted, I doubt they ever will.
- alephnerd 2y ago> Looks like, unsurprisingly, the resolution is more about mandating censorship than it is about curbing actual crime That is a fairly bad take tbh. I mentioned this in my previous comment about this treaty, and the primary driver is the fact that most countries (especially China, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, India) are NOT parties of the Budapest Convention because of the Censorship or Surveillance portions. Now that offensive security capabilities have proliferated, some amount of norms are required (which is what Article 12, 13 and 17 touch on), but the countries listed above will not budge on their censorship or surveillance stance. This treaty is itself is a result of the Track 1.5 Dialogues around cyberwarfare happening between the 5 Eyes and China [1][2] after tensions became dangerously bad in the early 2020s. If letting China continue their Great Firewall means we can formalize the rules of engagement for gray-zone operations using a third party (Appin/India, LockBit/Russia, ChamelGang/China or NK), so be it. The UN treaty is superseded by American jurisdiction anyhow. > future of a free internet The internet was never truly free. Access was always arbitrated by telcos (and a major reason why the tech industry has been a major donor to the EFF) who themselves are strongly regulated by governments. The difference is, the internet isn't only a Western project anymore, and consensus will need to be formed with other nations, unless we want to end up forming regionalized "internets" [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110#41211961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110#41211961 [1] - https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-departments/international-security-programme/uk-china-track-15-cyber-dialogue https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-departments/intern... [2] - https://www.idcpc.org.cn/english2023/bzhd/202406/t20240618_164294.html https://www.idcpc.org.cn/english2023/bzhd/202406/t20240618_1...
- Esras 2y ago
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agolink to the draft: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/v24/055/06/pdf/v2405506.pdf https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/v24/055/06/pdf/v24055...
- andersa 2y agoIs there a summary somewhere? 41 pages of dense text is quite a lot.
- codetrotter 2y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> LLMs are pretty good at summarizing things They’re really not. They seem like it. We have a collective GPT-Mann amnesia where we read something summarised that we understand, recognise it for the bullshit that it is, and then promptly trust the next prompt when it summarises something outside our expertise. LLMs seem to do better when summarising summaries, e.g. of classical works. Someone else has whittled down the meaning. The LLM puts it into simpler terms.
- ccvannorman 2y ago[flagged]
- Sirizarry 2y agoNow what does it have to say as a rebuttal to that criticism?
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoGPT summaries read like the kid who skims the chapter titles and tells you what the book is about rather than what it says. Like, any cybercrime legislation risks “enabling mass surveillance, violating privacy rights, and creating avenues for state overreach without sufficient safeguards.” There is no actual content in that sentence, just containers. Any policy proposal that has the word “extradition” must contend with how it “may facilitate politically motivated prosecutions.” > broad criminalization of cyber offenses, such as electronic forgery, could lead to the overreach of law enforcement This is literally any law!
- walterbell 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41237879 When I was at EFF, we did try to get UN official accreditation, but China would consistently veto it.. I was EFF's international activist and later international director for a number of years.. more of the work than you'd imagine has a global side to it. This has been true since the days of [DMCA].. elements of which were rejected by the US Congress in the mid-Nineties, then policy-laundered through WIPO into the 1996 Copyright Treaty, which meant that it had to become law after the US Senate consented to it in 1999. (Treaties don't need the support of both houses in the US). EFF and other orgs at the time learned the lesson that regional and international agreements can often be an end-run around local democracy or norms -- and that local laws (from the DMCA to the GDPR) can have wider ramifications on a global network.. EFF and partner groups often contribute to government and international proposals (a hundred-or-so of them have been involved in the cybercrime treaty process for many years [1] and I believe got it to a fairly good place before a last-minute push by some states to introduce more surveillance into it.) [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/joint-statement-proposed-cybercrime-treaty-ahead-concluding-session https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/joint-statement-propos... Earlier HN threads: UN Cybercrime Convention To Overrule Bank Secrecy, 40 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41221403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41221403 UN cybercrime treaty unanimously approved, 50 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110
- Dalewyn 2y ago>it had to become law after the US Senate consented to it in 1999. (Treaties don't need the support of both houses in the US). To be clear for those not familiar with American government structure, this is an intended separation of powers between the two Houses of Congress. The House of Representatives (aka Lower House) is tasked primarily with duties concerning money and commerce. Representatives have the sole authority to draft and ratify budgets, Senators may only ratify or not. The Senate (aka Upper House) is tasked primarily with affairs of state including but not limited to confirming and impeaching executive, judicial, and other public servant appointments; drafting and ratifying treaties; and helping ensure all States have a say in most political affairs. Most legislative tasks do in fact require drafting and ratification of sibling bills by both Houses of Congress, but certain things like treaties are the sole jurisdiction of one House or the other. The Senate has traditionally been viewed as more prestigious and powerful than the House, but actually neither is strictly better than the other.
- spit2wind 2y agoWhat's an ICT? The post doesn't define it yet, it appears their entire argument depends on understanding what it means.
- fulafel 2y agoComputers.
- red_admiral 2y agoAnd mobile phones, and the multimedia touchscreen in your car, and on your smart fridge, etc.
- fulafel 2y agoYes, comuters including computers in varying enclosures.
- comprev 2y agoInformation & Communication Technology
- photochemsyn 2y agoThe stationary bandit theory of government posits that organized crime cartels are in control of every single nation-state on the planet. E.g. the bandits in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) who wait until the village completes its harvest before plundering them are the best model for the establishment of stable governments where the plundering is organized and relatively non-violent. After all, as Frank Herbert says in one of his Dune books, "A small minority in contol of a large majority is not unusual in history". Getting the other monkeys to get your food while you sit on your rear degenerating into slothfulness is a nice gig if you can get it, I suppose. Of course, if all the other monkeys get wise to your game you're going to have to institute more violent measures to retain your position, and mass surveillance is a means to that end. Which is why the Saudis buy all that Israeli spyware, to keep their own population in line, right?
- aussieguy1234 2y agoThe real criminals are the often the ones in power. This would make the world less safe and help real criminals commit crimes with impunity, by targeting those who would seek to hold them to account.
- diggan 2y ago> The real criminals are the often the ones in power I mean, by definition, no. We usually call those "officials" or similar, it's not until convicted that they become "criminals".
- detaro 2y ago"criminal" is not defined as "convicted criminal".
- sulandor 2y agothere is benefit in making the distinction
- aussieguy1234 2y agoIn authoritarian regimes, officials often get away with peadophilla/child molestation, drug trafficking, rape and murder. The first two are often used as justifications for taking freedom away and giving more control or power to the government. However that gets us closer to an all powerful, unaccountable government. Power corrupts, sooner or later those who wish to commit these crimes will seek out official positions where they can commit them with impunity.
- katzinsky 2y agoI think he means it in an abstract sense where people can transgress "natural law" are criminals even though the de jure law might contradict it. I think it comes from this old idea that legislation is really about discovering the natural law that governs human socialization and conviction is about discovering criminals.
- deleted 2y ago
- firesteelrain 2y agoI like the fact that this is not a complaining article but actually put forward reasonable recommendations
- sambull 2y agosweet. now everyone gets to see what porn we view. build profiles on that, and use that sort of data to make decisions about us.
- pif 2y agoPlease, help me understand something! Private, remote communication was not a thing until a couple of decades ago: how can we consider it a basic human right?
- burkaman 2y agoPrivate mail is thousands of years old.
- highcountess 2y agoIt goes well beyond that. There are other means of communicating remotely and privately that are probably at least as old as human self-awareness. Technically speaking, we would need to consider many of the prehistoric cave paintings remote and private communications since no one knows what they mean besides the small group of humans that made them 20,000–40,000 years ago.
- some_random 2y agoIn how many of those places was there due process for the government searching that private mail?
- NikkiA 2y agoEncryption is also thousands of years old.
- burkaman 2y agoI don't know, but that isn't relevant to this conversation. Slavery was legal for the vast majority of history, but we still all agree today that freedom from slavery is a valid human right. "Due process" itself is a relatively new concept. All human rights were routinely violated for most of history, that's the whole point of enumerating them and discussing them. It's very new that any of these rights are even close to universally accepted. I can tell you that government surveillance of private communication has at least been a widespread concern for thousands of years. See for example: https://classicalstudies.org/imperial-spies-and-intercepted-letters-late-roman-empire https://classicalstudies.org/imperial-spies-and-intercepted-.... Many countries have centuries-old constitutional guarantees of the right to secrecy of correspondence: https://www.marottaonmoney.com/right-to-privacy-of-correspondence-of-other-countries/ https://www.marottaonmoney.com/right-to-privacy-of-correspon....
- consumerx 2y ago[dead]
- southernplaces7 2y agoThank god it's just a UN resolution then. It's not as if anyone pays the least attention to them, much less actually applying one firmly.