Unfettered access to power for law enforcement agencies is a worrying aspect of the Budapest Convention.
This was highlighted by Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) head of legal services Miliana Tarai while delivering a submission on the Budapest Convention before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence yesterday.
“While it is sometimes referred to as the gold standard because it is the most comprehensive and multilateral cybercrime treaty, the Budapest Convention has been critiqued for not having stronger safeguards for human rights,” she said.
“While the convention lacks privacy and civil liberties protection, procedural provisions are vague and also ambiguous. Consequently this gives a lot of room for states to empower their law enforcement agencies to carry out and encroach on the preservation of human rights and democracy.
“For instance, the surveillance powers this Convention would hand to the enforcement agencies are not balanced out.”
Ms Tarai said unlike other international law enforcement agreements such as INTERPOL, EUROPOL and Schengen Agreements, the Budapest Convention did not include specific provisions to protect citizens’ privacy.
“Another example is the weak protection that the convention has when dealing with political activities. The term ‘political offences’ is not defined and this ambiguity can be used to silence citizens and human rights defenders in our country.
“This poses a real danger to the spirit of democracy, human rights and the rule of law for our nation. Definitions are fundamental for the law uses definitions to separate issues of fact from issues of law.
“Under the convention, Fiji’s assistance could be authorised in many cases solely by law enforcement, which can then be without judicial approval or oversight.
“Since the convention doesn’t even have a reporting requirement, that is requiring instances of cooperation with other countries on foreign crimes to be made public, law enforcement decisions on these sensitive issues may never be subjected to civilian check or oversight.”
She said this would allow data collection, which would be handed over to foreign states merely on suspicion or if a person was being charged.
