Plus it has too many implications for surveillance and security; poor idea in any case.
> The convention has been heavily criticized by the tech industry, which has warned that it criminalizes cybersecurity research and exposes companies to legally thorny data requests.
> Human rights groups warned on Friday that it effectively forces member states to create a broad electronic surveillance dragnet that would include crimes that have nothing to do with technology.
> Many expressed concern that the convention will be abused by dictatorships and rogue governments who will deploy it against critics or protesters — even those outside of a regime’s jurisdiction.
> It also creates legal regimes to monitor, store and allow cross-border sharing of information without specific data protections. Access Now’s Raman Jit Singh Chima said the convention effectively justifies “cyber authoritarianism at home and transnational repression across borders.”
> Any countries ratifying the treaty, he added, risks “actively validating cyber authoritarianism and facilitating the global erosion of digital freedoms, choosing procedural consensus over substantive human rights protection.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_agai...
Ok, so it's basically a "five eyes" style agreement for sharing intel on citizens. Why would anyone want their government to support this?
Clearly not enough people oppose it, because five eyes has been a thing for decades, and isn't going anywhere.
While I agree that it's not a good idea, I can answer that last question:
The idea would be that when an American enforcement body, presumably the FBI, determines that a bunch of cash or whatever was stolen by Russian hackers, the treaty compels the Russian government to keep records of the hackers' activity, and it "creates frameworks for collaboration, including mutual legal assistance and extradition". So instead of saying "hey, you stole all our money" and getting the response "wow, it must suck to be you", we could make them give the money back and extradite the criminals.
Like, remember that time where they signed a treaty in 1994 that committed them to respecting and protecting Ukraine’s borders and then steadfastly stuck to it till present day?
You’ve convinced me. Entering this agreement with Russia, North Korea and China is a great idea.
Which is not inherently a bad thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
It would be a lot fairer to display tons of CO2 per inhabitant I think.
And that's before taking into account imported CO2.
California has got really good at building giant batteries - At peak times they provide 30% of the state’s electricity (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/22/californi...) - The Economist.
California is the 4th largest economy in the world by the way. A bit larger than a “small demonstration”.
Cheaper before the incentives?
When I log into my utility account, I can opt into solar generated power for X $/kwh more, not less.
Take your position to something of an extreme -- the Vatican could open up 200 coal power plants for its holy Bitcoin operations and still be sufficiently less impactful to CO2 than the US that nobody would target them during climate talks. Rephrased from the other direction, each US citizen would blow their CO2 budget by buying a shirt per decade to get down to the Vatican's levels.
That's a common mental failure mode, analogous to the sorites paradox. Countries are made up of many small actors and decisions, and pretending otherwise is unlikely to help you achieve your goals.
[0] Mostly -- transitive effects like one country generating all the goods another country uses are harder to account for. Assuming we could measure perfectly though...
I live in the Northeast. Solar reduced my grid demand by 40%. That translates to a full recoup of the investment in 60-65 months with subsidy, 100-110 without. The unsubsidized payback period is 1/3 of the projected useful life of the panels.
You know it’s a good idea because opponents big argument is safety of rooftop installers and future workers disposing of solar panels, topics that these folks DNGAF about in the least.
Europe has a relatively high carbon footprint per unit of output for things like animal husbandry compared to the US, they just don't do enough of it for it to add up.
This also works in reverse, eg. US importing goods from china and therefore not being on the hook for emissions generated by those goods. ourworldindata has another page that compares the difference between consumption based emissions and territorial emissions[1]. Looking at that page, consumption based emissions are 11% higher for the US vs 27% for the EU. That makes the US look better, but it's not enough to cancel out the fact that the US is 63% more carbon intensive than the EU.
perhaps 12% for 5% of the global population is too high. But you dont want to relate it to population. Relating to number of countries is rather non-sensical. Some are big (by productivity, area, population, etc.), some are tiny.
Making it relative to people, IMO, only serves to obscure the fact that the US/China/etc are by far the biggest producers of emissions.
Writing climate policy with them in mind makes more sense than pushing for somewhere like Monaco to reduce emissions, even if their emissions per person are high.
Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.
Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.
That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.
>Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762344
No, it's pretty straightforward. Count where a given good is consumed rather then where it's produced. It has to be estimated, but that's also the case for territorial emissions or other economic figures like GDP, but we don't throw our hands up and say "well it's too hard and too prone to fudging so we might as well not bother".
>Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.
What "feedback loops" are you talking about?
>That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.
Ok but surely you must recognize that the US, where the average person drives a pickup/SUV to work is emitting more carbon than something like India where the average person gets around by walking or using motorbikes? That's the concept that conversations like "US emits more carbon per capita" are trying to capture. "The systems are global" sounds like an excuse to continue driving a F-150 to work because of some spurious arguments about how hard it's do to do carbon accounting 100% accurately.
It doesn't really make much of a difference. For US specifically there's about a 10% difference.
Do you really honestly believe that the USAID spent $5M a year telling Sri Lankan journalists how to use non-gendered language?
That was a front for US-lead initiatives in a moderately opposing country. It was to funnel funds to destabilize what the USA didnt like.
And to be fair, good. The USA rested on its laurels for too long. Bout time they have to face the democracy they 'spread' is just fascism.
In no case will anyone ever say "Well, I am not happy it is gone but I am grateful for all the work they put in to help out of a desire to be good guys" so soft power isn't a thing.
To be clear, I have no quarrel with you on the belief that they're fronts. I only mean that they do not develop power of any sort.
- U.S. greenhouse gas emissions peaked around 2007, then declined by roughly 18% from that peak.
- 1990–2022: Emissions fell about 3% compared to 1990 levels, despite population and GDP growth.
- 2005 Benchmark: Emissions in 2022 were 17% below 2005 levels, largely due to cleaner electricity generation and efficiency improvements.
- Transportation: Consistently the largest source, accounting for ~30–35% of CO₂ emissions.
- Electric Power: Significant reductions—down 41% since 2005—due to coal-to-natural-gas shift and renewables growth.
- 2024: Energy-related CO₂ emissions totaled 4,772 million metric tons, down from 4,940 MMt in 2022.
- 2022: Total U.S. GHG emissions were 6,343 million metric tons CO₂e, or 5,489 MMt after land-sector sequestration
I agree 100%.
I don't see the benefits here.
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3951462?ln=en
> Amount of food sent
Also, the data is 2014-2018 when US food aid was managed by USAID. What is the US percentage now that USAID has been eliminated?
Secondly, this is only external aid, internally the US far outspend most countries with 100B towards SNAP. Most euro nations don't even have food stamp like programs.
And just so we are clear, that meager 10 points that I'm goal post shifting for is probably life or death for millions.
When you’re the one carrying the water, you get to decide where the water goes.
I actually prefer regimes like NATO where everyone is happy to leave the US in charge and doesn’t arm themselves. For all the projection of “strength” the current admin gives off, they are on their way towards reigning over a kingdom formed from the ashes of the republic's empire
And if not directly funding the terrorists, creating a situation so stupid that it will lead to a fresh batch for next years war.
Neither the people paying for it, nor the people receiving it want it to be done that way.
IMO this is all by design, and there are a non-zero number of NGO operatives on this very site who are frustrated that anything is impeding that plan.
(Unfortunately the current United States administration makes the nation much closer to one of the Bad Nations, though, so it's kind of moot anyway.)
The other three parts all concern areas not delegated to the EU. To become law, all three parts have to be approved by the EU parliament and the EU council (which consists of the heads of the executives of the member states) and the local parliaments of the member states. Depending on local law, even regional parliaments have to approve it (Belgium is such a state). The final implementation of Mercosur is not expected before 2028.
I mean, what are you going to do? Instigate a rule that only nice people can be signatories? You've not played nice in various ways in the past, so you cannot sign this promise?
(Not to say that I agree with the treaty. See concerns by human rights groups mentioned in article and all.)
But, then again, in the Angloamerican culture, its always 'others' who are evil. Never itself.
Live streaming Gaza: I could not find a reliable source. As of today there are several webcam etc. claiming to live stream. I don't have the time to watch to verify this. However, there was a news block I place until recently and except for the occasional TikTok nothing on video, let alone 'live'.
[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Link?
> And it’s not like both the US and UK are openly saying that they are maximizing cyberwarfare against everyone as if it was something to be proud of.
Link?
> The country that is facilitating a livestreamed genocide in Gaza
Which country is that? And where’s the livestream streaming?
I'm not really trying to get into the political part of it fwiw.
> surrenders power to a regime with partial control by objectively bad actors
...do you think we are a regime with good actors? Why? What signals of morality or competency do you look for?
Never mind, we already crossed that line: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzq2p0yk4o
This was a very proportional response to Putin[1] the other day, so it's still technically game theory.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/putin-says-russia-tested...
None of this sounds good for privacy and data protection.
Opting out of the treaty was probably a good choice. Opting out doesn’t preclude the US from cooperating with international cybercrime investigations, but it does avoid more data collection, surveillance, and sharing.
Maybe there is some more complexity to this argument, that I'm missing. But, it's not one that has merit without justification.
But that's beside the point. The most objectionable parts are about state surveillance and the potential for human rights abuses.
For example, here's what the EFF had to say about it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/effs-concerns-about-un...
> the US has excellent protections for PII and data privacy
*for _US nationals_ :)
> Maybe there is some more complexity to this argument, that I'm missing.
I think you’re missing the entire argument. Why would it be a good thing for a country to volunteer its’ companies PII through a treaty with foreign governments like Russia, North Korea, and China?
What? No, we're not. What gave you that impression?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41207987 ("EFF’s concerns about the UN Cybercrime Convention (eff.org)", 99 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39129274 ("Proposed UN cybercrime treaty has evolved into an expansive surveillance tool (eff.org)", 64 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210110 ("New U.N. Cybercrime Treaty Unanimously Approved, Could Threaten Human Rights (scientificamerican.com)", 53 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41221403 ("UN Cybercrime Convention to Overrule Bank Secrecy (therage.co)", 42 comments)
I don't doubt their history explains the shape of their economy.
This may seem like I am defending North Korea, but in reality I am putting in perspective who/why they are. Facts which nearly amount propaganda to western nations.
Given the presence of some extremely authoritarian states on the list of signatories, the fact that the UK and France signed on seems to confirm my suspicions about the trajectory of freedom in those countries. And surprisingly Sweden! I feel like Mullvad users should be concerned.
I’m actually not sure about Germany though. I almost posted a similar list above but then I noticed the European Union is listed as a signatory, so not sure where that puts the EU members not listed: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mt...
Edit: another commenter mentioned something about treaties needing to go through the EU parliament and council if the areas of concern aren’t delegated to the EU. Not sure which side of the fence this falls under, and I bet there are some potential legal challenges waiting regardless. So perhaps France is hedging its bets by signing on as an individual nation, indicating its willingness to implement the treaty no matter what happens with the rest of the EU. But I am no expert on EU bureaucracy and politics!
I’d be shocked if anyone alive is.
A couple of weeks ago the Council of the EU authorized both the Commission and members to sign onto this convention. That’s the best I’ve got and it still doesn’t tell us if this is would apply automatically to Germany and others without them signing on, but I guess in theory it helps the convention get over the 40 signature threshold if it weren’t going to already. Signing on still isn’t done either as it runs from October 25th 2025 through December 31st 2026.
PS: if you saw a previous version of this comment, your eyes weren’t fooling you, I just got taken for a ride by a bad source that confused the Council of Europe with the Council of the EU so I nuked it.
That depends on the topic of the treaty.
The EU member countries have delegated their decision making powers on certain limited number of topics to the EU institutions, like The EU Commission, The EU Council or possibly others. One such topic is the trade. As a result, all EU countries share the same trade policy.
For other topics, where there is no such delegation in place, everything needs to be ratified by every member country individually.
I am unsure into which category this particular treaty falls.
This isn't giving any country any sole power over cybercrime prosecution decisions.
For example: "Compelled Technical Assistance: The draft requires countries to adopt laws enabling authorities to compel anyone with knowledge of a particular computer system to provide *necessary information* to facilitate access."
The US would have to have laws that would force you to provide login information to systems if the government wanted access to it. This would run contrary to the 5th amendment.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/effs-concerns-about-un...
Algeria,Angola,Australia,Austria,Azerbaijan,Belarus,Belgium,Brazil,Brunei Darussalam,Burkina Faso,Cambodia,Chile,China,Costa Rica,Côte d'Ivoire,Cuba,Czech Republic,Democratic People's Republic of Korea,Democratic Republic of the Congo,Djibouti,Dominican Republic,Ecuador,Egypt,European Union,France,Ghana,Greece,Guinea-Bissau,Iran (Islamic Republic of),Ireland,Jamaica,Mozambique,Namibia,Nauru,Nicaragua,Nigeria,Palau,Papua New Guinea,Peru,Philippines,Poland,Portugal,Qatar,Russian Federation,Rwanda,Saudi Arabia,Slovakia,Slovenia,South Africa,Spain,Sri Lanka,State of Palestine,Sweden,Thailand,Togo,Türkiye,Uganda,United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,United Republic of Tanzania,Uruguay,Uzbekistan,Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of),Viet Nam,Zimbabwe
I wonder what countries you do associate with data privacy.
You're absolutely right. When thinking of data privacy people think of the USA, where you can be sent off to a gulag island if a random officer does not like what he sees on your personal phone -- which he is, of course, legally allowed to search for no good reason.
Estonia, Iceland, Switzerland, the Nordic countries and America.
Yes. We do all of that. But so does practically everyone else. The difference is our federal structure and--until recently--independent courts provided a bit more oversight than other countries' citizens had access to. And we've had--until recently--respect for privacy held deeply enough by enough people that it turns into a stink at the federal level in at least some respect.
Most countries have national logging requirements, disclosure requirements and domestic police with the powers of the NSA. (America remains one of the few countries in which one can form a legal entity with zero identification.)
Well, people should start accepting new norms that are different from what they used to know, not just data privacy, but even in other values as well, like personal freedom. I am sure some of the countries above have more personal freedom for a person compared to countries that lecture others about it, meanwhile the individuals get tracked by their phone through cell towers, get tracked while on the road by some unregulated cameras, get tracked online with digital ID, get tracked everywhere and if you end up getting caught and prosecuted, you will lose your basic human needs like getting a job or even voting in the so called free countries.
You seem to be making a blanket statement about “not the first country I think about when…” of places you know nothing about.
That's almost 10% of global GDP. Who comes up with these numbers?
edit: cybersecurity ventures seems to be the real source for the 10.5T number: https://cybersecurityventures.com/cybercrime-damage-costs-10...
Apparently their methodology is just assume $3T cybercrime cost in 2015, then compound it by 15% annual.
then there is also the unspoken rule of "dont shit where you eat" aka RU/CIS based ransomware operators and hackers cant attack any companies in the CIS region.
a good read, https://www.recordedfuture.com/research/dark-covenant-3-cont...
But I note the treaties.un.org link is signatories as of late 2024.
Why are they not publishing the current signatories? This is absolutely not something that should be murky.
STATUS AS AT : 30-10-2025 09:16:00 EDT
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-un...
> states parties are obligated to establish laws in their domestic system to “compel” service providers to “collect or record” real-time traffic or content data.
That's probably the biggest poison pill. The whole data sharing thing got watered down to the point of farce. Of course the EU won't extradite Russian LGBT activists under this law. But similarly, how likely do you think it would be for North Korea to extradite its own state-sponsored cybercriminals? They can simply claim that doing so would go against their "sovereignty, security, or other essential interests". Case closed!
I wouldn't get excited about the US "not signing". With the government shutdown, they might just be waiting for the document to be in New York before they bother. Hanoi is far.
64ss1: This Convention shall be open to all States for signature in Hanoi in 2025 and thereafter at United Nations Headquarters in New York until 31 December 2026.
Article 37 is spooky. Expands extradition to where there might not be preexisting extradition treaties.
Fuck article 11. It's the EU's "any program for committing cybercrime is a crime" law, and makes programmers culpable. IANAL, but it actually looks like it criminalizes the entire software supply chain. Sure, there's a clause in there that looks like it's supposed to protect security research (11s2) but this is the thinnest of loincloths.
It also seems to apply to "crime where there was a computer somewhere around". As for what constitutes "crime":
Article 2:(h) “Serious crime” shall mean conduct constituting an offence punishable by a maximum deprivation of liberty of at least four years or a more serious penalty;
...that seems to mean that if publishing information against the state regime is punishable by 4+ years and you used a computer to do it, there is now a basis for seizing your data and extraditing you.
I'm not even going to get into the implications this has for damaging privacy in general. This is some dark ass shit.
- (ii) To cooperate and assist the competent authorities in the collection or
recording of; traffic data, in real time, associated with specified
communications in its territory transmitted by means of an information and
communications technology system.
And more so:
3. Each State Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be
necessary to oblige a service provider to keep confidential the fact of
the execution of any power provided for in this article and any
information relating to it.
And since it was said on a computer, combined with insulting 'His Glorious Leader (spit) ' is a death penalty, thats a extraditing cybercrime.
Sure it could be argued thats not a real example. But given OFCOM's recent stunts of sending british compliance letters to US firms with no british presence, I'd rather not have other countries manufacturing shit laws and exporting to us as a "treaty".
> "Russia, however, Rodriguez said, has objected to the convention for infringing state sovereignty by allowing other nations to investigate cybercrimes in its jurisdiction. So in 2017, Russia proposed negotiating a new treaty, and in 2019 the UN adopted a resolution to do so, backed by Russia, Cambodia, Belarus, China, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela."
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/14/un_cybercrime_treaty/ ("Russia-pushed UN Cybercrime Treaty may rewrite global law. It's ... not great")
> "It was proposed by Russia in 2017 and adopted by the General Assembly in December 2024 amid resistance from human rights organizations"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_agai...
(The House of Representatives is effectively shut down, but only because the Speaker of the House has been unilaterally putting it into recess at the beginning of every session. The House Republicans all voted to grant the Speaker the power to do this whenever he wants, at the beginning of their current term.)
The President isn't shut down, and only the President is needed to sign a treaty; it is submitted for ratification later and that, absent a deadline in the treaty, can take as long as it takes.
Also, even if the Senate was required to sign a treaty, the Senate isn't shutdown, and is in session and doing business.
Per the article: “Illicit flows of money, concealed through cryptocurrencies and digital transactions, finance the trafficking of drugs, arms, and terror. And businesses, hospitals, and airports are brought to a standstill by ransomware attacks.”
Then there’s this: Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine https://www.reuters.com/investigations/inside-trump-familys-...
When the W.H.O. went into China to "investigate" the COVID virus and came back saying "Nope, nothing to see here!" was probably one of the most predictable and pathetic things from the UN.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/inside-trump-familys-...
“America first”, right? Load of horse shit.
Countries like Nigeria, Morocco, North Korea and Russia signing a "cybercrime" treaty is just hilarious to me.
I don't believe for a second that these countries want to crack down on cybercrime, considering their citizens are the main perpetrators and beneficiaries of it, and they've taken zero actions to prevent it before today. Lagos is essentially the Silicon Valley of internet fraud, and it happens with permission from the highest levels of their government.
This obviously is just an excuse to create a global dragnet for governments looking to crack down on dissent.
Just seems very distracting when actual abuses and interesting political topics are hidden away in /active (like ICEs use of facial recognition)
China especially actively fabricates crimes for Chinese dissidents living outside its borders, and this is a perfect vehicle to allow them to track and monitor those people with ease.
This also confirms the PSF foundation being wary. The USA would love to put unaffiliated developers in prison.