The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) is deeply concerned by the federal government’s announced signing of a UN treaty that is primed to facilitate human rights abuse in Canada and across the world.
Presented as a means of addressing cybercrime, the UN Convention against Cybercrime (UNCC) is in fact a global surveillance agreement that will obligate Canada to help any other government that adopts the treaty to investigate any activity it chooses to criminalize. Governments with egregious track records for violating human rights and the rule of law will qualify as parties to the UNCC. While Canada has rightfully chosen not to enter into information sharing agreements with many of these countries, it will have no choice once this treaty is adopted.
The treaty has been denounced by human rights groups in Canada and across the world, media freedom organizations, leading security researchers, industry associations and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) which noted that the UNCC has “significant shortcomings, with many provisions failing to meet international human rights standards”. It threatens to cause gender-based harm and to undermine the rights of children, members of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, human rights defenders, political dissidents, whistleblowers and journalists.
Treaty negotiations demonstrated deep rifts between the world’s countries with respect to human rights and the rule of law. In a telling indication of how the UNCC will be applied, a number of governments rejected encoding the most basic human rights safeguards during negotiations while some even questioned whether human rights had a role to play in the treaty at all.
While these negotiations yielded some modest improvements, core safeguards such as the need for judicial authorization of even the most highly intrusive surveillance are left optional. Even the treaty’s signing ceremony in Hanoi last year provided ominous symbolism, taking place against the backdrop of one of the most aggressive crackdowns on online dissent in the world.
Canada opposed the treaty when it was initially proposed and, throughout the negotiation process, highlighted the dire threat to human rights that it poses. Yet despite these clear concerns, the government signed the UNCC last week without any public consultation.
Meanwhile, Canada’s national framework for navigating cross-border cooperation is so outdated, it is simply not up to the task of ensuring the treaty will not be abused once it is in force. At the same time, the Canadian government appears increasingly willing to trade away our human rights to achieve its economic and other policy objectives and is proposing to weaken one of Canada’s core safeguards, the outdated federal Privacy Act, even further.
Canada and at least 40 other countries will need to ratify the UNCC before it fully comes into force here.
The following statement on the signing of the UNCC can be attributed to Tamir Israel, Director of CCLA’s Privacy, Surveillance & Technology program:
“The decision to sign this treaty, which poses a dire threat to human rights in Canada and on a global scale, is the latest disturbing indication of Canada’s faltering commitment to civil liberties. It signals yet another expansion of government surveillance capabilities without any consultation and without any commitment to address the negative consequences that will result.”
