Russia is pushing to control cyberspace. We should all be worried.
www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/global-opinions/russia-is-pushing-to-control-cyberspace-we-should-all-be-worried/2017/10/24/7014bcc6-b8f1-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html
Russia's cyber-meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has been accompanied by what U.S. and European experts describe as a worrisome Kremlin campaign to rewrite the rules for global cyberspace.
A draft of a Russian proposal for a new "United Nations Convention on Cooperation in Combating Information Crimes" was recently shown to me by a security expert who obtained a copy. The 54-page document includes 72 proposed articles, covering collection of Internet traffic by authorities, "codes of conduct" for cyberspace and "joint investigation" of malicious activity. The language sounds bureaucratic and harmless, but experts say that if adopted, it would allow Russia to squeeze cyberspace even more.
The Kremlin's proposed convention would enhance the ability of Russia and other authoritarian nations to control communication within their countries, and to gain access to communications in other countries, according to several leading U.S. cyber experts. They described the latest draft as part of Moscow's push over the past decade to shape the legal architecture of what Russian strategists like to call the "information space."
The proposal was floated by the Kremlin early this year, and outlined in an April 4 article in Kommersant. The Moscow daily reported that the Russian Foreign Ministry had described the convention as an "innovative" and "universal" attempt to replace the 2001 Budapest Convention, which has been signed by the United States and 55 other countries but rejected by Russia. Kommersant said "Russian authorities saw a threat to the sovereignty of the country" in the Budapest pact.
Russia's bid to rewrite global rules through the United Nations was matched by a personal pitch on cyber-cooperation in July from President Vladimir Putin to President Trump at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg. Putin "vehemently denied" to Trump that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election, Trump said in a tweet. Trump then floated a mystifying proposal: "Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe."