During 31 March – 1 April 2021, the CyberSouth and GLACY+ projects organised a Workshop on the functioning and role of 24/7 Networks of Contact Points in the international cooperation on cybercrime and e-evidence, together with INTERPOL. Approximately 170 participants, representing criminal justice authorities (investigators, prosecutors, judges and representatives from the central authority of mutual legal assistance) from the priority countries of the C-PROC’s GLACY+, CyberSouth, CyberEast, and iPROCEEDS-2 projects attended this workshop.
The goal of the meeting was to introduce the current international cooperation legal framework and instruments that are available to the cybercrime investigation units, with reference to the mutual legal assistance process, police-to-police cooperation as well as public-private cooperation.
The role of the Networks of 24/7 contact points established under the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, G7 and Interpol and their benefits were underlined. Moreover, the challenges of Mutual Legal Assistance and cooperation with Multi-International Service Providers were addressed and the participants engaged with the experts coming from US DOJ, INTERPOL, Cloudflare and Facebook, in seeking clarifications about the existing mechanism for international cooperation.
The new legal framework for international cooperation in cybercrime and e-evidence yet to be included by the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention was also briefly introduced by underlining the new instruments for cooperation with Multi-International Service Providers and responsibilities for the 24/7 Budapest Convention Network.
The Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe will continue to support the promotion of the international cooperation instruments and channels through its cybercrime capacity building projects.
