Brownstone Institute
The Foreboding UN Convention on Cybercrime
From the Brownstone Institute
The UN committee approved the text of the Convention on Combating Cybercrime. Human rights organizations and information technology experts have called it a threat to democracy and the free world.
“One of the world’s most dangerous surveillance treaties was approved with a standing ovation,” wrote Austrian digital rights group Epicenter Works.
The UN General Assembly is now due to vote on the adoption of the Convention in September.
“It can be assumed that the treaty will be accepted without difficulty at the UN General Assembly in September, and will thus be officially considered a UN convention. After that, it will be available for signature and subsequently it can be ratified,” said political advisor Tanja Fachathalerová. “It can be assumed that it will not be a big problem to achieve the necessary forty ratifications, which are necessary for the treaty to enter into force.”
Legitimization of Repression against Journalists and Opponents
The proposed international treaty aims to combat cybercrime and improve international cooperation between law enforcement agencies. However, more than a hundred human and civil rights organizations around the world have warned of a serious threat to human rights and criticized the fact that the text of the treaty lacks adequate safeguards. According to them, the planned agreement would oblige UN member states to introduce comprehensive measures for the supervision of a wide range of crimes.
“The contract is really a surveillance agreement with too few provisions on data protection and human rights. In practice, it legitimizes the more repressive measures against political opponents or journalists that we now see in authoritarian states,” writes the netzpolitik.org server.
China and Russia Stood at the Beginning of the Convention
It all started with a UN resolution initiated in 2019 by Russia, China, and other countries (such as Iran, Egypt, Sudan, and Uzbekistan) with 88 votes in favor, 58 against, and 34 abstentions.
European states have proposed changes, but according to experts, the resulting compromise does not even meet the conditions necessary to preserve privacy and protect human rights.
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“Unfortunately, a data access treaty has been drawn up that will allow governments around the world to exchange citizens’ personal information in perpetual secrecy in the event of any crime the two governments agree is ‘serious.’ This would include eavesdropping on location and real-time communications around the world, and force IT workers to divulge passwords or other access keys that would compromise the security of global systems that billions of people rely on every day. And it’s not just private sector systems – government systems are also at risk,” said Nick Ashton-Hart, Digital Economy Policy Director at APCO, who is also leading the Cybersecurity Tech Accord delegation to the Convention negotiations.
The Threat of Criminal Prosecution of Journalists and White Hackers
The Ashton-Hart treaty also puts journalists and whistleblowers at risk of prosecution. The International Press Institute was so concerned about this risk that it placed a full-page ad in the Washington Post. Independent security experts around the world also warned in February that they could face criminal prosecution for their work protecting IT systems from cybercriminals under the draft Convention.
Governments Could Prosecute Children for Sexting
“Incredibly, the text expressly allows governments to prosecute children for “sexting” in the same article (14) that is supposed to protect them from sexual predators. The article also puts people working in charities who help bring predators to justice at risk of prosecution because they need access to material created by predators as part of their work. Civil society advocates have repeatedly pointed out this obvious deficiency, but to no avail,” Ashton-Hart said.
Concerns about Freedom of Expression
According to experts, companies that operate internationally will also be exposed to increased legal and reputational risk after the arrest of employees. The private data of individuals and vulnerable communities can be accessed by law enforcement agencies around the world, even in cases where the perpetrators’ actions are not criminal in their place of residence or in cases that raise significant concerns about freedom of expression.
Cooperation between authorities and states can be kept secret without transparency about how governments use the treaty, or without provisions that allow companies to challenge law enforcement requests, even if they are illegal.
Criticizing Leaders as a Crime?
“Facilitating collusion in any ‘serious’ crime opens the door to ‘crimes’ such as criticizing leaders or persecuting minorities,” writes Ashton-Hart in his analysis.
On August 13, the International Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest and most representative representative of the private sector, openly called on the UN not to adopt the convention at the General Assembly in September.
“If governments fail again to protect the international human rights legal framework they so often vociferously support, then new, dangerous norms created in international law will haunt us for decades to come,” Ashton-Hart said.
Republished from the author’s Substack
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From the Brownstone Institute
China is going pear-shaped as Beijing panics and wheels out the “monetary bazooka.”
Cue the Worldwide inflation.
Just a few weeks ago I did a video about how China is on the edge of recession. Weeks later, the edge of recession has now progressed to a full-blown Chinese fire drill.
So What Happened?
Last week, China’s ruling Politburo held an emergency economic meeting and decided to crank up the money printers to 11, pumping money to consumers, to banks, to property developers, basically to anybody who might spend it.
Bloomberg called it an “adrenaline shot,” as in it’ll pump assets but won’t last long.
Specifically, Beijing’s going to dump about 3.8 trillion yuan – roughly half a trillion dollars – to keep the economy running.
A trillion yuan goes to consumer subsidies, including a hundred twenty US per month child subsidy – a hundred twenty’s big in China – to bribe Chinese mothers into having more kids, which they’ve stopped doing.
Next up are the banks – as always – who get a cool hundred and forty billion US along with another 100 billion dumped into stock markets.
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Allegedly this is all to spur spending – as in the banks lend the money out and the stockholders feel rich – but it would do wonders for the gaping holes in China’s teetering financial industry.
Beyond the Money Dump
Beyond the money dump, China’s slashing interest rates across the board – which governments do to try and gin up some tissue-fire growth.
They’re slashing downpayment requirements on houses, opening a special credit facility so banks and hedge funds can gamble on stocks, and cutting the reserve requirements for banks – meaning banks can raid their vaults and go on a lending spree.
Put it together, and Beijing’s doing everything it can to get money out in the wild, down to bankrolling gamblers and pouring yet more trillions down the black hole of China’s comically over-built housing market.
You may have seen the ghost towns China’s built; here comes round two.
What Scares China
Why so desperate, you might ask?
Easy: China is panicked not only about a looming recession but that it might be falling into the Japan-style doom-loop of structural stagnation thanks to President Xi’s anti-business jihad.
The key number here is the interest rate on 30-year government bonds, which is a classic indicator of a zombie economy in the spawning.
Ominously, China’s 30-year just fell below Japan’s. Flirting with zombie territory.
What’s Next
Near-term, they’re popping the bubble in Beijing with stocks soaring.
And while 4 trillion yuan is a lot of money, this isn’t yet the Big Bang – that would be a long-rumored 10 trillion money dump by Beijing.
They’re not there yet, probably because the US and Europe haven’t hit the meat of their recessions. Debt-fueled Americans are still buying Chinese exports.
If and when that breaks down, either because Americans are out of money or Trump rolls out tariffs on China, Beijing’s up against the wall, and it will blow out into worldwide inflation.
China’s Turn for Chaos
I’ve mentioned in previous articles how if China goes down, the Chinese people won’t have a sense of humor about it. This ain’t Japan where people shake their heads and obey.
Beijing knows this, they know the kinetic history of the Chinese masses when they’re angry, and if they panic hard enough they may reach for a war to both distract the population and to clamp down on dissent.
Just this week they launched a massive military exercise in a disputed area of the South China Sea, there could be more to come.
Republished from the author’s Substack
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From the Brownstone Institute
Morens implicated Margaret (Marg) Moore, known colloquially as “The FOIA lady” in trying to hide information from the American people, particularly that related to the origins of Covid-19, which is a felony.
A relatively unknown public records officer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now at the centre of a burgeoning scandal involving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
The saga unfolded after subpoenaed emails belonging to David Morens, a former top advisor to Anthony Fauci, revealed that someone had taught him to game the system and avoid emails being captured by FOIA requests.
“i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” Morens wrote in a Feb 24, 2021, email. “Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”
Morens implicated Margaret (Marg) Moore, known colloquially as “The FOIA lady” in trying to hide information from the American people, particularly that related to the origins of Covid-19, which is a felony.
It sparked an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to expose what Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) called a “cover-up.”
A letter to NIH director Monica Bertagnolli in May suggested “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of these once trusted public health institutions.
“If what appears in these documents is true, this is an apparent attack on public trust and must be met with swift enforcement and consequences for those involved,” Wenstrup wrote.
Wenstrup said there was evidence that a former chief of staff of Fauci’s might have used intentional misspellings — such as “Ec~Health” instead of “EcoHealth” — to prevent emails from being captured in keyword searches by FOIA officials.
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Today, Wenstrup announced a subpoena to compel Moore (The FOIA lady) to appear for a deposition on October 4, 2024, saying that she’d repeatedly resisted these efforts and delayed the Select Subcommittee’s investigation.
“Her alleged scheme to help NIH officials delete COVID-19 records and use their personal emails to avoid FOIA is appalling and deserves a thorough investigation,” said Wenstrup.
“Holding Ms. Moore accountable for any role she played in undermining American trust is a step towards improving the lack of accountability and absence of transparency rapidly spreading across many agencies within our federal government,” he added.
Moore, however, has indicated through her lawyers that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Her lawyers wrote to Wenstrup explaining that she’d cooperated with the Select Subcommittee to find “an alternative” to sitting for an interview, including expediting her own FOIA request for her own documents.
They also explained that Morens’ emails suggesting Moore gave tips “about avoiding FOIA,” were misleading because Morens, under oath said, “That was a joke…She didn’t give me advice about how to avoid FOIA.”
Nonetheless, Moore’s decision to plead the Fifth has only fuelled concern over the lack of transparency and accountability of one of the nation’s top health research institutions.
It’s not over until the FOIA lady sings!
Further reading: The great FOIA dodge
Republished from the author’s Substack
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