A new internet convention sponsored by Russia alarms western powers

Rights groups and Western powers have been alarmed as the United Nations on Friday approved a Russian-led bid that aims to create a new convention on cybercrime.

The resolution sponsored by Russia and backed by China has been approved by the General Assembly, which would set up a committee of international experts in 2020.

The committee panel will work to set up "a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes," the resolution said.

Fearing as a bid to restrict online freedom, the United States, European powers and rights groups suspect that the new convention would allow the codification at an international and global level and that the language is code for legitimizing crackdowns on expression.

A number of countries have increasingly tried to turn off the internet; for instance, China heavily restricts internet searches to avoid topics sensitive to its communist leadership, as well as news sites with critical coverage, India cut off internet access in Kashmir in August after it stripped autonomy to the Muslim-majority region and Iran taking much of the country offline as it cracked down on protests in November.

Any new UN treaty that spells out internet controls would be "inimical to the United States' interests because that doesn't tally with the fundamental freedoms we see as necessary across the globe," a US official said.

The United States argues that the world should instead expand its sole existing accord on cybercrime, the 2001 Budapest Convention, which spells out international cooperation to curb copyright violations, fraud and child pornography.

The Budapest Convention was drafted by the Council of Europe, but other countries have joined, including the United States and Japan. Russia has however opposed the Budapest Convention, arguing that giving investigators access to computer data across borders violates national sovereignty.

A new UN treaty on cybercrime could also possibly render the Budapest Convention obsolete.