US Still Supports Flawed UN Cybercrime Treaty

Even if the UN passes the cybercrime treaty, the Senate would need to ratify it and Trump would need to sign it. It is unclear what Trump’s opinion of the treaty is but he is not a big fan of the UN.

The draft of the resolution was approved yesterday, even as tech companies, human rights defenders and even members of Congress trashed it.

The US representative to the UN, Jonathan Shrier, said they would demand accountability from any government that misused the treaty (like that has **EVER** worked in the past) and would “encourage” signers of the treaty to pass human rights laws. We might want to start with the US. The PRESS bill has been languishing in the Senate for almost a year.

Shrier also said that countries should refuse information requests from nations that violate human rights protections in the treaty. The only problem is that there are really no human rights protections in the treaty to violate, so this is a bit of a word salad.

The White House said that they decided to support this treaty, even though it is horribly flawed, so that they could have a role in trying to fix it some time in the distant future. Of significant concern is that countries could use the treaty to dramatically expand surveillance and punish opponents, as Trump has indicated he will do in January. Oh, wait, the White House didn’t include that very last part.

Few changes have been made to the draft that was introduced in 2019, even after 6 democratic Senators wrote a letter to the White House. Given that it takes two-thirds of the Senate to approve a treaty, this could be an uphill climb.

The Cybersecurity Tech Accord — a global industry group representing more than 157 large tech companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Cisco, SalesForce, Dell, GitHub, HP and more — has repeatedly slammed the treaty out of fear it will be used against cybersecurity researchers. Several tech companies are also concerned about potentially thorny data requests that will be issued by governments through the treaty.

It is completely unclear whether a new House and Senate would even take up the treaty, never mind approve it and that could be part of the White House’s plan – to blame Congress if it gets voted down. It is also unclear whether Trump would support it, but, it has been endorsed by Putin, so maybe.

This is definitely a “stay tuned” item. The UN will likely vote on it this year. Then it is up to different countries to ratify it. One thing that makes me very suspicious is that Russia and China have been pushing for this since 2019. That can’t be a good sign. Credit: The Record

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