A Greek court on Thursday sentenced the founder of Intellexa, a collective of spyware makers, to eight years in prison for illegal wiretapping and privacy
26.02.2026 15:46
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A Greek court on Thursday sentenced the founder of Intellexa, a collective of spyware makers, to eight years in prison for illegal wiretapping and privacy
Among the 66 international organizations the administration withdrew from are a handful that work on cybersecurity topics. via @timstarks.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/trump-pulls-...
On Dec 16, 2025, a group of survivors from the Woman, Life, Freedom protests & @ihrdc.bsky.social, w/ support from the SLP, filed a criminal complaint in Argentina for crimes against humanity committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 2022 protests.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...
Big Tech firms have been complaining about the “patchwork” of state laws ever since Californians adopted their landmark privacy law in 2020, Alan Butler writes. Trump's AI executive order is thus an escalation of a fight that has been brewing for years.
Khashoggi widow files complaint in France alleging Saudi government infected devices with spyware therecord.media/khashoggi-wi...
Explainer: What is India's politically contentious Sanchar Saathi cyber safety app? reut.rs/48uT32f
Authorities have launched a transnational crackdown on scam compounds in Southeast Asia, but it's leaving survivors with incomplete support, writes Laura Scherling.
Incredible- Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day."
#TransnationalRepression is reshaping how authoritarian regimes project power & target critics abroad. @marcuskolga.bsky.social @imleeszefung.bsky.social @kentonthibaut.bsky.social @nosumacero.bsky.social & @lisandranovo.bsky.social introduce a framework to counter these operations: bit.ly/3Xgfz9I
By contrast, the Budapest Convention has 81 states parties (meaning they have ratified or acceded to the Convention) and 2 countries have signed but not ratified (Ireland and South Africa).
www.coe.int/en/web/conve...
Breakdown by UN region: 21 African states, 19 Asia-Pacific states, 7 Eastern European states, 11 Latin American and Caribbean states, 12 Western European and Other states.
Official list of all signatures to the UN #Cybercrime Convention ( #UNCC ) is now available.
72 total signatures (70 UN Member States plus the EU and the State of Palestine).
treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDe...
The Atlantic Council launched the "Authoritarian reach and democratic response: A tactical framework to counter and prevent transnational repression."
@marcuskolga.bsky.social @imleeszefung.bsky.social @kentonthibaut.bsky.social @lisandranovo.bsky.social
www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-res...
Congratulations to the entire team at @dfrlab.bsky.social for the release of "Authoritarian reach and democratic response: A tactical framework to counter and prevent transnational repression (TNR)."
"72 states signed the new UN Cybercrime Convention in Hanoi. The Chair of the Alliance, called it a landmark of multilateral cooperation in the current climate—stressing that effective implementation will need global, multi-stakeholder action to uphold rights & tackle cybercrime
Glad to see the opening ceremony of the UN Cybercrime Convention was indeed streamed live via UN Web TV. Watch here for statements from UN officials and government representatives signing on to the Convention.
x.com/unodc/status...
UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) comment on the signing ceremony of the UN #Cybercrime Convention: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
Civil society organizations continue to raise the alarm about the risks posed to human rights and cybersecurity by the UN Cybercrime Convention (#UNCC). However, many states have already signed at the ceremony in Hanoi - for example the EU as an org. Next step for signatories must be mitigation.
While there are human rights safeguards built into the treaty, these are widely viewed by civil society and industry as insufficient to address the risks posed by the instrument.
You can read a much more detailed analysis by @eff.org here: www.justsecurity.org/98738/cyberc...
There are also deeply concerning provisions relating to data preservation and disclosure, as well as secrecy around these requests, that could threaten proprietary systems, tech workers, and privacy in general.
There are also concerns some of the offenses required to be adopted in national law could threaten the work of good faith security researchers whose work is dedicated to finding vulnerabilities.
The extremely broad scope - where serious crime is defined by national laws, creating an impossible to predict patchwork - could facilitate domestic and transnational repression, pulling in other countries to abusive practices through cooperation.
The UN Convention not only requires states parties to criminalize specific offenses under their domestic systems, but seeks to establish a cooperation mechanism between parties to facilitate investigations and prosecution of “serious crimes” with digital evidence - cybercrime or not.
Of course - this treaty was initially proposed by Russia, which refused to join the Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on cybercrime, claiming it was a European instrument that excluded much of the rest of the world (ironically, many global majority countries have since joined Budapest).
Signing the Convention is only the first step towards becoming a Party, with the concomitant obligations and risks that will carry. Ratification takes years, and now is the time to ascertain what mitigation measures are needed before the UNCC comes into force.
Many civil society organizations and private sector companies will not be in attendance, given their continuing opposition to the Convention due to the risks it poses to human rights and cybersecurity.
Neither the ceremony nor any of the planned side events will be livestreamed, so it will be difficult to keep track of which states sign and what kind of statements they make in person. We will depend on public statements shared by governments and others in attendance.
The UN Convention against Cybercrime (#UNCC) opens for signature this weekend in Hanoi. Despite heavy criticism from civil society and the private sector, it is expected that many states will sign on - even those that initially opposed the instrument like the EU and its member states.
ICYMI (story broke late Friday evening): A judge has ordered NSO Group to stop targeting WhatsApp users.
At the same time the judge reduced the damages the spyware maker had to pay to WhatsApp from $167 million to $4M, becasue there was no evidence NSO’s behavior was “particularly egregious."
The latest on the chat control saga in the EU from Suzanne Smalley of @therecordmedia.bsky.social
therecord.media/chat-control...