The United Nations (UN) Agrees on a Draft for a „Cybercrime Convention“

It effectively abolishes banking secrecy entirely, endangers security analysts and journalists, and extends to crypto companies. However, it is not yet decided.

The United Nations is working on a draft agreement to combat cybercrime. The draft, which was initially proposed by China and Russia in 2017, aims to strengthen international cooperation in preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes. It also includes provisions for freezing and confiscating the proceeds of cybercrime, which explicitly includes cryptocurrencies.

The draft agreement, which is set to be presented for a general vote in the fall, has drawn criticism from some organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for its broad and vague definitions of cybercrime. The EFF has warned that the draft could potentially criminalize standard practices in security analysis or white-hat hacking, and leave security researchers and investigative journalists dangerously unprotected.

The draft also includes provisions to ensure that banking secrecy laws do not hinder cybercrime investigations. It states that each member state should take measures within their judicial systems to identify, trace, freeze, and confiscate any involved asset. Every country is to enact or establish the legal measures necessary for this purpose.

In this regard, every government must empower courts and other competent authorities to make banking records and other financial or commercial documents available or seize them. No government should refuse to act on grounds of banking secrecy.

Moreover, governments should not reject information requests from other states because they infringe on banking secrecy. The end of banking secrecy – and beyond Bank secrecy has, of course, long been eroded. Essentially, there is no country where banks can refuse to provide information about their customers' account balances to inquiries from authorities, whether they are tax offices or law enforcement.

Additionally, there is an international and automatic exchange system of tax-relevant data that has been in place since 2015. However, any data beyond this is currently only released through orders from national courts in most countries. The UN apparently wants to change this, potentially making it mandatory to release bank data based on the judgment of foreign courts. It seeks to effectively abolish banking secrecy.

Since it’s not just about banks but all forms of “property” in which criminals store their proceeds, crypto companies could also be affected, potentially even DeFi platforms. The question also arises as to how the UN will handle the fact that cryptocurrencies have made banking services possible without banks. Will the United Nations align with the FATF’s efforts to crack down more severely on privately used wallets?

However, the broad and vague definitions of cybercrime in the draft agreement have raised concerns among some organizations, such as the EFF, which has warned that the definitions could potentially criminalize standard practices in security analysis or white-hat hacking, and leave security researchers and investigative journalists dangerously unprotected.

The EFF has also noted that the draft lacks strong safeguards to prevent the misuse of digital investigations and digital evidence, and that it could lead to more surveillance and less trust in computers and digital technologies.

Overall, the UN draft agreement on cybercrime is a complex and wide-ranging document that aims to strengthen international cooperation in preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes. However, the broad and vague definitions of cybercrime and the potential impact on banking secrecy and freedom of expression have drawn criticism from some organizations.