US declines to join more than 70 countries in signing UN cybercrime treaty

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Treaty scope and key concerns

  • Commenters highlight provisions enabling:
    • Real-time traffic/content data collection and secret orders to service providers.
    • Cross-border data sharing with minimal transparency and weak human-rights protections.
    • Expansion of “cybercrime” to any offense involving a computer, where “serious crime” is anything punishable by ≥4 years in prison.
  • Security and digital-rights critiques (e.g., EFF summaries) are cited: risks of broad surveillance dragnets, criminalization of security research, and tools for transnational repression rather than just cybercrime control.

Reactions to the US not signing

  • Many see non-signature as a rare positive move for privacy and civil liberties, noting the US can still cooperate on cybercrime without this framework.
  • Others are skeptical, pointing out US mass surveillance, weak consumer data protection, and extensive cyber operations; they doubt privacy is the real motive.
  • Some argue joining could have constrained US power or conflicted with constitutional protections (e.g., compelled technical assistance vs. Fifth Amendment).

Authoritarian signatories and human-rights risks

  • Strong focus on the treaty’s origins and support from Russia and other authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states (China, Iran, North Korea, etc.).
  • Fear that:
    • Regimes will use “cybercrime” as a pretext to target dissidents, journalists, and protesters abroad.
    • Extradition and data-access mechanisms could be invoked against political speech that’s criminalized domestically.
  • Several express disappointment that the EU, UK, and some Nordic states signed alongside such governments, seeing it as evidence of a broader drift toward surveillance and “chat control.”

Effectiveness and enforceability doubts

  • Commenters question whether states that heavily rely on or tolerate cybercrime (Russia, North Korea, parts of Africa/Asia) will meaningfully enforce the treaty.
  • View that bad actors can simply invoke sovereignty or “security interests” to refuse cooperation, making the treaty asymmetric in practice.
  • Concern that, instead of reducing cybercrime, the convention mainly standardizes global monitoring and legal cover for state surveillance.

Broader skepticism of UN and international law

  • Some see the convention as another overreaching, largely symbolic UN instrument that powerful or rogue states will ignore when inconvenient.
  • Comparisons to other global agreements (climate, land mines, WHO) fuel a wider debate on whether such treaties meaningfully constrain states or just add bureaucracy.