On global cybercrime, India votes in favour of Russia-led resolution

News: A UN committee has passed a Russian-led resolution entitled “Countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes”. India has voted in favour of the resolution.

Facts:

About “Countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes”

Aim: The resolution is aimed at promoting a global consensus and working out concrete and practical approaches to countering cybercrime in the absence of effective international legal instruments.

Key provisions:

• Commitment to use information and communications technology (ICTs) exclusively for peaceful purposes,
• Respect the sovereignty of states in the information space,
• Cooperate in the fight against the criminal or terrorist use of ICTs,
• Prevention of the proliferation of malicious ICT tools and techniques and the use of harmful hidden functions

Additional Information:

Budapest Convention

• The Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe, also known as the Budapest Convention, is the only binding international instrument on cybercrime.
•  It was signed in 2001 and came into force from 2004. India and Russia are not a party to the Convention.
• The objectives of the Convention are:

o   Harmonising the domestic criminal substantive law elements of offences and connected provisions in the area of cyber-crime

o   Providing for domestic criminal procedural law powers necessary for the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime

o   Set up a robust regime of international cooperation on issues of cybercrime.

Christchurch Call Initiative

o   It was launched by French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in May 2019.

• The initiative is aimed at curbing extremism online. It comes in the backdrop of attack on mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand where a gunman had killed people while live-streaming the massacre on Facebook.
• Under the initiative, signatory nations and tech companies need to adopt measures to ban objectionable material online and create a framework for media to report on atrocities without amplifying them.
• The initiative consists of a non-binding set of agreements. It does not contain any definition of violent extremist content and enforcement or regulatory measures. It would be up to each individual country and company to decide how it would honour its voluntary commitments.
• India is a signatory to the “Christchurch Call” initiative.