Overview

• The Biden administration supports a UN treaty on cybercrime, marking the first legally binding international agreement on the issue.
• The treaty includes measures to combat child sexual abuse material and improve cross-border information sharing and extradition processes.
• Critics, including human rights organizations and some US lawmakers, warn the treaty could enable authoritarian regimes to justify censorship and surveillance.
• Russia and China, previously excluded from the Budapest Convention on cybercrime, are included in this new UN initiative, raising concerns about the influence of these nations.
• The treaty requires a two-thirds majority in the US Senate for ratification, posing a significant hurdle for its adoption in the United States.