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https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/decoding-uncybercrime-treaty Restrictions on Free Speech Rather than focusing on core cybercrimes like network intrusion and computing system interference, the draft treaty’s emphasis on content-related crimes could likely result in overly broad and easily abused laws that stifle free expression and association rights of people around the world. For example, the draft U.N. Cybercrime Treaty includes provisions that could make it a crime to humiliate a person and group or insult a religion using a computer. This potentially makes it a crime to send or post legitimate content protected under international law. Governments routinely abuse cybercrime laws to criminalize speech by claiming to combat disinformation, “religious, ethnic or sectarian hatred,” “terrorism,” “the distribution of false information,” and many other harms. But in practice, these laws are used to stifle criticism, suppress protests and dissent, and clamp down on free expression and association. This is despite the right to free expression—including the right to insult and offend—being protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—of which the U.N. Member States negotiating the new treaty are parties to