This week, we signed an open letter, alongside 20 organizations and experts, urging the Canadian government to reject the UN draft Convention on Cybercrime. The draft is up for approval next year in Hanoi.
“The draft treaty is deeply flawed in multiple ways that will have a lasting detrimental impact on human rights at a global scale,” the 8-page letter reads in part. ” It will also undermine cybersecurity, constrain Canada’s ability to act in its own interest and the interest of its citizens and people in Canada when faced with information sharing requests from other states, and place Canadians, including our diaspora communities, at greater risk of harm from extraterritorial human rights abuses.”
In it’s conclusion, the open letter says “Canada would lose more than it would gain as a signatory to the draft Convention.”
Read it here.
The letter was endorsed by the following organizations and individual experts:
Organizations
• Amnesty International Canada – English Section
• Amnesty International Canada – Francophone Section
• Centre for Free Expression
• Centre for Law and Democracy
• Criminal Lawyers’ Association
• International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
• OpenMedia
• PEN Canada
• Privacy & Access Council of Canada
Individual Experts
• Noura Aljizawi, Senior Researcher at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
• Colin Bennett, Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria
• Andrew Clement, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
• Ron Deibert, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto
• Tamir Israel, Technology and Human Rights Lawyer
• Brenda McPhail, Director, Executive Education and Professor of Practice, McMaster University
• Adam Molnar, Assistant Professor, Sociology & Legal Studies, University of Waterloo
• Alex Neve, Visiting and Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law, University of Ottawa
• Jonathan Penney, Citizen Lab Fellow and Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
• Kate Robertson, Senior Research Associate at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto
• Jim L. Turk, Director, Centre for Free Expression, Toronto Metropolitan University
