Strasbourg
Texte original en anglais, non traduit.
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Opening remarks by Mr Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe
Minister Vuelta Simon,
Commissioner Simard,
Attorney General Ranasinghe,
Dear participants,
Opening: The World in One Room
Somewhere in this room is the person who will see the next attack first. A few rows away are the people who will trace it, bring back the evidence from across the world, and put it before a judge.
It makes the Council of Europe’s Octopus Conference one of the few places left where the world still comes together against cybercrime. And it makes me the least qualified person in this room to talk about computers. So naturally, I was asked to speak.
I. Cybercrime Moves into the Rupture
I said one of the few places left. And the reason goes well beyond cybercrime.
Cooperation between states is breaking down on almost everything, almost everywhere.
When we last met here at Octopus a year and a half ago, the deliberate deconstruction of the international legal order was already under way.
Since then, it has accelerated. To the point of rupture. A rupture that cybercriminals are moving into faster than anyone, and in every direction.
They wait inside hotel Wi-Fi for the officials they are hunting, and read people’s private messages without them noticing. They slip into live camera streams. In the middle of a war, they steal the secrets of drone makers.
They build newsrooms that never existed, with reporters who never lived, and fill them with stories written by machines. And this week, in this country, they took over the fridges of hundreds of supermarkets.
Each of these attacks reaches past its victim into the institutions, rights and trust a free society runs on. Protecting them is what the Council of Europe calls democratic security.
II. AI: Faster, Cheaper, Blurred
All of this once took the resources of a state. Now it is within almost anyone’s reach. And artificial intelligence does the rest.
Three seconds. That is all AI needs to clone someone’s voice. When an attack is blocked, AI can rewrite it and launch it again. And this summer, AI agents broke out of the test environment built to contain them. No one told them to.
Attacks are getting faster. Barriers to entry and costs are falling. And the lines between crimes are blurring.
A scam compound is cybercrime and also human trafficking.
A fake voice before an election is a lie, possibly a crime, and sometimes foreign interference.
III. What the Crime Is, Where the Evidence Is
Criminals thrive in that confusion. Justice cannot. A prosecutor needs to know what the crime is. A judge needs proof.
The Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime gives them both. It defines the crimes: breaking into a computer, intercepting data, destroying it, using it for fraud. And it lets investigators collect electronic evidence for any crime, under rules that protect people’s rights.
When that evidence sits with a company abroad, it can be lost if no one acts fast. The Second Protocol opens a direct line to that company.
It is close to entering into force. I call on every Party to ratify it, and to be ready to apply it from day one.
IV. A Common Legal Space Built to Close the Gaps
This year, the Council of Europe’s Budapest Convention on Cybercrime turns twenty-five.
It was signed when only 500 million people were online. There was no social media as we know it. Today’s AI was science fiction. Its drafters wrote it for technologies they could not yet imagine.
They built it to grow and opened it to the world. Today, 83 States from every region are Parties. Its definitions have shaped laws and treaties far beyond them, including the new United Nations convention.
In a rupture, crime lives in the gaps between legal systems. The Council of Europe’s common legal space is built to close them.
Closing: Nothing Will Wait
Minister, Commissioner, Attorney General, dear participants,
The rupture will not wait. Technology will not wait. Next year’s elections will not wait.
None of this fits into ones and zeros. Against cybercrime, no state, no court, no company and no organisation is strong enough alone.
Criminals cooperate across borders, without rules. We cooperate under rules we have agreed together. That is precisely our strength.
When the next attack comes, someone in this room will see it first. The rest of us must already be at their side.
Thank you.
© Council of Europe — Opening of the Octopus Conference on cybercrime, dedicated to the 25th Anniversary of the Budapest Convention