zlacker

>>walter+(OP)
UN cybercrime treaty was unanimously approved by 200 countries this week.

>>walter+Wx
Well, that’s depressing. Were EFF recommendations applied?

>>acheon+AC
I don't think the EFF has much suction at the level of international diplomacy. Most UN countries, including much of Europe, don't have the basic categorical legal principles much of EFF's argumentation relies on, especially re: free expression and rules of evidence.

Fortunately, those same legal principles in the US cannot be overridden by a treaty.

>>tptace+sJ7
There has always been a fairly established group of NGOs with similar criticisms at the international level, including EFF (you're more likely to hear these critiques from EFF at HN because ... well, we're a pretty an EFF-adjacent community here.)

Unfortunately, the UN mostly works as a venue for governments negotiating with governments, with accredited NGOs having a position of being tolerated in those discussions, but with no real power. Outside of those tolerated NGOs, influence drops even further.

(When I was at EFF, we did try to get UN official accreditation, but China would consistently veto it. There are other digital rights groups that have been accepted though, and we worked very closely with those. The full list of NGOs are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_con... )

>>dannyo+8M7
Yeah, I was only struck by the previous comment's implication that the UN Office of Drugs and Crime might in the ordinary course take and act on feedback from the EFF. Like, it could happen, but it would be very surprising, right?

I think it almost doesn't make sense, in that I perceive EFF to be, whether overtly or not, a very American organization with very American public policy views.

>>tptace+vP7
The other issue is that the EFF is the minority opinion on many, many subjects. Many of the most effective NGOs have a "we agree with you, but this 10% needs to change," which is flexible enough that governments who otherwise wouldn't care pay attention.

The EFF isn't like that - for example, the idea of outlawing DRM, while popular among hackers and people here, is a total nonstarter internationally. It's about as effective as hiring the FSF to lecture Microsoft; or hiring PETA to lecture Tyson; or hiring the Amish to lecture you on electrical design. The opinions are so diametrically opposed that it's not even worth considering.

>>gjsman+4R7
So, just to clarify something here: unless they've radicalised a lot since I've left, EFF doesn't think that DRM should be outlawed. It thinks that governments shouldn't outlaw their citizens from talking about how to circumvent DRM, or criminalize the bypassing of DRM for lawful purposes. As I mentioned in my other comment, the anti-circumvention statutes of the DMCA were controversial enough to fail to pass in the US when they were introduced as part of the original 90s copyright reforms, and were only introduced in the US after they were successfully inserted into the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Those provisions have been pretty controversial ever since, and there have been multiple attempts by many groups and industries to limit the damage since then. (The Copyright Treaty itself can be interpreted to permit circumvention for purposes of fair use or other exceptions and limitations on copyright, and the limitations on individuals communicating about how to circumvent DRM may well be unconstitutional in the US -- the courts haven't really ruled on this.)

EFF and partner groups often contribute to government and international proposals (a hundred-or-so of them have been involved in the cybercrime treaty process for many years https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/joint-statement-propos... and I believe got it to a fairly good place before a last-minute push by some states to introduce more surveillance into it.)

You don't really get to hear about the compromises, because you don't really need to kick up a fuss about something that has worked out okay -- and even if you do post about the positive fine print, nobody sends such exciting documents to the front page of Hacker News.

>>dannyo+5D8
EFF getting more and more extreme in the last few years does seem to be a pretty widely held opinion on HN though.

>>Michae+649
I've been EFF adjacent since the nineties, and I think people have always claimed this, often when they have read a call-to-action that uses stronger language than they are comfortable with. I think the causality is that a strongly-worded action gets wider propagation than the more moderate analysis. EFF positions on most matters has been pretty consistent IMHO.