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A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention
- bethekidyouwant 3mo agoCanada signs most UN stuff
- alephnerd 3mo agoSo has Australia, the EU, and the UK [0]. That said, being a signatory has limited impact as long as it isn't ratified. [0] - https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-16&chapter=18&clang=_en https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...
- ignoramous 3mo ago> the EU, and the UK The EU has their own cybercrime treaty: https://commission.europa.eu/law/cross-border-cases/judicial-cooperation/types-judicial-cooperation/e-evidence-cross-border-access-electronic-evidence_en https://commission.europa.eu/law/cross-border-cases/judicial... But you'll never hear a peep from "no logs at all costs" VPN companies based in the EU.
- alephnerd 3mo agoE-Evidence sharing is just a subset of the broader UN Cybercrime treaty which has been signed.
- dgellow 3mo ago> But you'll never hear a peep from "no logs at all costs" VPN companies based in the EU It’s actually a fairly common topic discussed by privacy advocates, including VPN companies
- inigyou 3mo ago403 error. Now that's concerning. Europe doesn't want me to know what the law is in the place where I am.
- thesmtsolver2 3mo agoThat's for your safety and well-being citizen. Sometimes less information is more information.
- bawolff 3mo agoYeah, but normally when you sign something its because you intend to ratify it in short order.
- alephnerd 3mo agoNot true. Plenty of UN treaties have been signed but stalled on ratification.
- bawolff 3mo agoTrue, but there is still a general expectation that if you sign you intend to make a good faith effort to ratify. There being plenty of exceptions (a country not engaging with int law in good faith! How shocking) doesnt change that i think most of the time signers do try to ratify.
- failbuffer 3mo agoWhen are we going to see substantive legislation advancing digital rights instead of chipping away at them? For the US, we need a new bill of rights, a bill of digital rights that constitutionally protects right of repair, right to root our own devices, right to be free from dragnet surveillance, right to general purpose computing, and the right to access speech without government-mandated age or identity checks. With all the libertarian millionaires and billionaires swirling around silicon valley and the venture capital space, why can't we make that happen?
- mcsniff 3mo agoBecause libertarians generally want fewer laws, not more.
- dexterdog 3mo agoAnd there are far too few of them elected to have any real impact.
- jambalaya8 3mo agothat doesn't mean they don't want some of the 'right laws'. otherwise they would be anarchists and communists not libertarians.
- jagged-chisel 3mo ago> … why can't we make that happen? Greed. More money to provide the tools of oppression via government contracts.
- Cider9986 3mo agoThomas Massie introduced the best privacy bill I have seen. I know nothing about political strategy but i would think a democrat would have been a better cosponsor. Will it even get voted on if the house speaker doesn't want it? https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com/ https://www.surveillanceaccountability.com/ >Warrant required Government must go before a judge to access your metadata, location, or financial records — just like searching your home. >No Data Shopping Agencies can no longer simply purchase data from brokers to bypass the warrant process. >Face recognition banned Warrantless facial recognition and AI biometric surveillance in public spaces is prohibited. >You Can Sue Private right of action means if the government violates your rights, you have legal recourse. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8470/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8470...
- Waterluvian 3mo agoIt feels like there’s this weird layer to domestic and international politics where you do a lot of signalling to one audience while simultaneously winking at other audiences that you’re not actually serious. (I can never tell who is getting winked at…) I feel like WYSIWYG politics is what most of us want, but probably doesn’t actually work. The Ned Stark character that is righteous and right and quickly meets the headman’s axe of the game theory and brinksmanship of everyone else.
- Iolaum 3mo agoWhile I agree this is the case, I think this is a consequence of low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse. If the quality of those two goes up, then WYSIWYG politics will emerge as a preferred choice. I only wish I knew of possible ways for us to get there :(
- airstrike 3mo agoUnfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design. The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.
- Avicebron 3mo ago> Unfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design. Absolutely. Bread and circuses isn't a new idea. >The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end. Points for the doing good in the end. But it's a rule in hell/serve in heaven issue, if you first need to create hell with your quest for power you have failed the objective of doing good in the end.
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- sunshine-o 3mo agoAbout "cybercrime" in general my feeling is there is a status quo between the criminals and countries. Something like we do not take down your economy and you do not go after us. I know for a fact that even the most powerful organizations are powerless to have some relatively unsophisticated group caught and put behind bar. The idea we would need conventions to start acting is a joke.
- gib444 3mo agoDistantly related: similar to the local councils here in the UK that don't go after the obvious and prolific drug-front barbers and takeaways, because they pay business rates (local business tax) and probably employee taxes too for just enough staff for it to be believable.
- zuzululu 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hn_go_brrrrr 3mo agoCanada's GDP per capita is low, not its GDP.
- quadrifoliate 3mo agoThe GDP per capita is just low compared to the US. It's roughly the same as the UK. And I do think there are some ridiculous inter-provincial bureaucracy issues in Canada, it's hard to take OP's generalized rant seriously.
- zuzululu 3mo agoI added evidence and footnotes but the post got flagged. Which part of those facts did you want to refute?
- gjm11 3mo agoI'm not sure whether your "adversary determined to reclaim its own lands" is Europe's adversary (Russia, wanting to take Ukraine) or Canada's adversary (the United States, wanting to take Canada) but in neither case does "its own lands" seem like a reasonable description of what it is they want. And from where I'm sitting (in the UK, so I don't have a front-seat view of any of this) it seems as if "it's pissed off its largest trading partner" is pretty inaccurate too: isn't it much more the case (1) that the US picked pretty much all the fights here and (2) that it's largely Donald Trump who's pissed off with Canada, and most US individuals and institutions think Canada is perfectly OK? Mr Trump isn't dictator of the United States yet, and pissing him off is not the same thing as pissing off the US.
- zuzululu 3mo ago
- panarchy 3mo agoCanada is so lucky to have someone like Michael Geist. He's been reporting on and doing in depth investigations on privacy invasions for about 2 decades now.
- fidotron 3mo agoIt would be luckier if the government actually listened to him.
- emptybits 3mo agoYes, and I'd include Cory Doctorow in the list of Canadians paying attention and writing about it. Back to 2024: "Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare" https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-07-23-expanded-spying-powers-in-russia-crime-cybers-you-607f0ab61f8a https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-07-23...
- andrewstuart 3mo agoWrong. The government cares.
- b112 3mo agoThe only way to have age verification on an international level, is to have treaties allowing for the sharing of information about citizens, digitally, in that context. And this is that level of cooperation. And it has all the hallmarks of what comes next, identity verification. And this, is what this is for. In order to prosecute anyone, you need to validate who did the crime. And that requires knowing who that person is. Not hearsay, not postulated, but validated "who this is". So you need to lock down anonymous access to the internet, in order to ensure you can easily and always prosecute such crimes. And one of the issues right now, is that if someone in the UK does "bad thing" in Canada via the internet? It's doubly hard to track. So creating frameworks which will (on the backend) require some form of identity verification to work effectively, well... that tracks from where I sit and have seen in the last 2 years. Frankly, from a government's perspective, this is no different than all the changes with KYC, for example 50 years ago the Government of Canada knew pretty much nothing about its citizenry. Certainly, it had no clue about bank account balances, transactions, investment holdings, a person's wealth and more. Now it knows enormous amounts of data, perhaps an arbitrary example is that your RRSP and TFSA(like American 501k) information, balances, and more are now yearly sent to the GoC. I believe also all information on trades made are, too, even in non-registered accounts. This absolutely wasn't the case, not to this degree, even a decade or two ago. Some of these obligations are via ratified international treaties. The degree of surveillance, fiscally, is astonishing now. Americans know of this of course, after 9/11 they gave their government enormous data, and keep giving it, eg credit card transactions. I remember when I was young, my parents arguing about having to get SIN cards (social insurance number). While it as introduced in the 60s, something happened which made it more of a requirement. Its only purpose at the time was for Revenue Canada to track info. Everyone argued about it, discussed it, was upset! It was the first time people needed "a number" to open certain bank accounts. Yet we come from that, to this in really one generation's lifetime. One of the problems is that, there is a massive, immense, enormous problem here right now, in terms of bots/foreign actors/asshats spreading immense disinformation for profit or state actor based goals. And with LLMs, it's going to get so much worse. People on HN at least are capable of some filtering, but the average Joe just sees video and 100% believes it is factual and true. I wish I could see another path to locking out the asshattery, whilst keeping the internet anonymous. But I don't really. And unless a grass roots movement comes around, to ensure that every crime on the internet has a very high degree of success for prosecution? Then we'll be getting an identity managed internet. I'm sure a lot of people will say "We can force companies to filter!", well, can you? For every forum out there? For torrents? For everything? And even if you think the "big boys" can be the main filter points, well, do you want a private company to decide what you post or not? And they'll need some way to ensure people don't just create a new account when banned! So they'll want ID too, if they're legislated to filter. And if they're legislated to filter, can you fight decisions in court? Do you have the presumption on innocence? Do you have the right to face your accusers? A jury of your peers? With Google, Facebook, anyone these days, you get banned and it's nigh impossible to even find out why. While there are exceptions, our governments are required to have criminal courts, and things prosecuted there. I really don't want private, fiscally motivated companies to be the gatekeepers, if gatekeepers there must be. Ah well. This is all a very unpleasant path.
- leonvoss 3mo ago>As of May 2026, the following 76 participants have signed the treaty: Algeria, Angola, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Columbia, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Cuba, Czechia, North Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, European Union, Fiji, France, Ghana, Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Ireland, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Laos, Libya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Sweden, Thailand, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Some wonderful countries here: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China. Thankfully the US hasn't signed it and probably won't because it thinks itself too above international law. Interestingly, Qatar signed it with [the reservation](https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-16&chapter=18&clang=_en#EndDec https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...) that >The State of Qatar does not consider itself bound by the provisions of Articles (16), (15), and (14) of the Convention, as they contradict the provisions of Islamic Sharia, national legislation, and the social and cultural values of the State of Qatar. These provisions [being](https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/cybercrime/convention/text/convention-full-text.html#art14 https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/cybercrime/convention/text/co...) Article 14: Offences related to online child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation material, Article 15: Solicitation or grooming for the purpose of committing a sexual offence against a child, Article 16: Non-consensual dissemination of intimate images. I am trying to figure out what this means, as I am aware the Prophet married a 9 year old, but Google assures me the minimum age of marriage in Qatar is 16 with parental approval, and it's rare, and I thought Islam required no images of really anything at all, much less females of any age who are to be in burqas when in public.
- shevy-java 3mo agoDemocracies want data from their slaves, I mean, ... citizens.
- chris_explicare 3mo ago[flagged]