Back 2018 Underground Economy Conference

As delivered

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Council of Europe.

Since 1949 our Organisation has been fighting to protect and promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law across our member states.

Throughout those past seventy years our values have been constant, but the challenges that we face have changed and evolved.

There is no greater example than the ICT revolution.

Information and communication technologies – with the internet at their core – have linked up computers around the world: with 23 billion connected devices today, set to rise to 75 billion by 2025.

In doing so, they brought a wealth of ideas, information, and opportunity to individuals, societies and enterprises on a scale not envisaged just a few short decades ago.

And this rapid transformation has brought a great many benefits to people around the world.

But as you know better than anyone, reliance on ICT and the internet has also made us vulnerable to new threats: it is cyberspace that has made cybercrime possible, and its impact is all too real.

Online sexual exploitation, including of children; the large scale theft of personal data, violating the right to private life; and efforts to manipulate the environment in which elections are fought and the technology that is used to process and confirm results.

But perhaps the most quantifiable crimes are those that you are here to consider today.

The underground economy – a cybercrime economy – is now worth at least 1.5 trillion dollars in annual revenues, with offences including illicit online markets, trade secret and IP theft, stolen data sharing, ransom ware, and crime as a service.

For our Organisation, and others, this poses burning questions about what more can and must be done to protect people and to uphold the rule of law.

When the tools to commit cybercrime are made available on the web – and the Dark Web – and when its profits are generated there, on whose territory is the underground economy located?

When so much evidence is stored somewhere in the cloud – or the darkest part of the web for that matter –, which laws and jurisdictions apply?

And when crime of this magnitude takes place, at such speed – and across international borders – what mechanisms are available to bring together public and private actors from across countries and continents to put a stop to these practices?

Some of these crimes are new, and some are new manifestations of crimes that are only too well known.

But the methods by which those crimes are committed – the nature of cybercrime – is what preoccupies our thinking today.

We need both to reach up into the cloud to secure electronic evidence and stretch down into the underground – the Dark Web – where so many crimes are committed and so much of the proceeds are sold or laundered.

So you might say that we are a little stretched.

But it is a challenge that we can and must meet.

As an international organisation, with 47 member states across Europe, we have the will and the capacity to bridge the gap between many of the ethical problems posed by the underground economy and the practical solutions in law.

Indeed, we are already doing this.

Our Budapest Convention is the widest and most pertinent international treaty on cybercrime and electronic evidence today – not just within Europe, but across the world.

It has 61 parties drawn from every continent.

10 additional parties have signed it or been invited to accede.

And a further 70 states have used it as a guideline for their own domestic legislation.

The Convention criminalised a range of conduct, provided procedural tools to make more effective the investigation of cybercrime and the securing of electronic evidence, and eased the way for more efficient international co-operation.

Today, law enforcement authorities are using mechanisms put in place on the basis of the treaty to that effect, each and every day.

But it is not enough.

The Budapest Convention is now 17 years old – and in the course of the past two decades both ICT and the underground economy have evolved at a dizzying rate.

Individuals, enterprises and governments often feel out of their depth, dragged underwater by the currents of technological change.

They feel helpless in the face of this challenge – and so we must provide them with the equipment they need to break the surface and breathe.

That is why we are now in the process of negotiating an additional Protocol to the Convention.

And that Protocol aims to make mutual legal assistance more efficient, to establish a framework for accessing evidence in the cloud regarding criminal cases, and make new, additional law enforcement powers that are subject to the rule of law and data protection safeguards.

My colleague Alexander Seger will go into greater detail about the content of the Protocol, but I can tell you this:

It will not succeed without expert input – input from you and others like you.

Your technical knowledge and practical insights are essential for the development of an effective and efficient new law.

A first round of consultations took place alongside the Octopus Conference earlier this summer.

And the aim is to complete a draft Protocol by the end of next year.

So time is of the essence, and I urge you to get involved so that we draft a law that attracts the support of countries inside and outside Europe and is used to maximum possible effect.

The challenge before you at this Conference is significant.

You aim to raise awareness, share information, and co-operate in the twin tasks of understanding and combatting cybercrime in the underground economy, and I have no doubt that you will rise to that challenge.

But over the course of the next few days, I hope that you will set about your work in the knowledge that the Council of Europe is your ally and partner.

Let us work together and shine a blinding light into the darkest corners of criminal, underground economy.

Thank you.

Strasbourg 5 September 2018
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