The UN Cybercrime Draft Convention is a Blank Check for Surveillance Abuses

The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee is just weeks away from finalizing a too-broad Cybercrime Draft Convention. This draft would normalize unchecked domestic surveillance and rampant government overreach, allowing serious human rights abuses around the world.

Source: The UN Cybercrime Draft Convention is a Blank Check for Surveillance Abuses

It is an open secret that in the U.S., the NSA and other government agencies routinely collect all of the online data that they can. Which basically means all of it. This includes thing like cell phone "metadata" as well (e.g. times and dates of calls and the numbers of the caller and person being called). Though I would not be at all surprised to learn that all conversations were recorded as well.

This new U.N. convention basically normalizes such behavior further and all around the world. While it might be slightly surprising that this was not a U.S. proposal, it is not at all surprising that it is a Russian one.

The justification is the same thing it always is. To stop the criminals. To stop the terrorists. There used to be an expression that if we have to give up freedoms to defend ourselves from terrorist then they have already won. Well, that's an easy solve... Just redefine what our freedoms are! Privacy, apparently, along with 4th amendment rights, are no longer in that category.