Freedom of information is kryptonite for autocrats. On August 9, United Nations member states approved the first worldwide treaty on cybercrime that was initiated by Russia and supported by Communist China. While the Kremlin has championed the treaty, the West has opposed it out of fear that it might be used by authoritarian states to enact state-level repression online.   

This treaty has very little to do with fighting cybercrime globally. Instead, it’s a mere window dressing for enabling authoritarian regimes to censor free speech globally and allow global surveillance. As President Putin has consolidated control, however, Russia has grown aggressive on the cyber-regulation front. In 2019, Russia submitted a UN General Assembly resolution, backed by other authoritarian states including China and Iran, which privileged government-controlled internet and derailed American efforts to set more liberal cyberspace norms.      

A decade ago, Mr. Putin called the internet a “CIA project.” Five years ago, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned regime security forces to “deal seriously with cyber agents of insecurity.” President Xi said the internet must be “clean and righteous” and called for “cyber sovereignty.”       

They fear the internet’s power to facilitate domestic unrest. Mr. Putin fears Russia is ripe for a color revolution, while Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement showed the Islamic Republic to be little more than a zombie regime. China fears Western ideology and social unrest.   

Russia, China, and Iran have pursued similar strategies. The Kremlin controls news organizations and social media platforms while oppressing independent journalism. Moscow has utilized increasingly sophisticated tools to monitor and censor online traffic in hopes of eventually detaching Russia’s internet from global networks.  

Iran, too, seeks a national Intranet to firewall Iranians from truth while replicating popular apps for domestic use only. The Supreme Council on Cyberspace and Revolutionary Guards demand all social media services accessible to Iranians host their servers inside the country. When crises loom, they slow or sever the internet to prevent real news from drowning the fake. Beijing also shored up internet censorship project the “Great Firewall of China” to fight “cyber hegemony.”      

Ordinary Russians, Chinese, and Iranians embrace the internet, though. Russians regularly use virtual private networks to escape the Kremlin’s press bubble, all the more so as they seek to bypass Mr. Putin’s restrictions on reporting the true cost of his 2022 decision to invade Ukraine. 

A survey presented earlier this month to the Iranian parliament, meanwhile, noted almost two-thirds of Iranians now use VPNs while that proportion climbs to more than 90 percent for those in universities and government research centers. Despite China’s internet censorship, VPN “usage in China nearly doubled” in 2023. They may not have freedom, but they want to see and hear what the free world does.   

As Russian, Chinese, and Iranian cyber criminals attack the West, Moscow leverages this lawlessness to demand internet regulation like an arsonist seeking to control firefighting policies. Initially, Mr. Putin shied away from multilateral regulation of cyberspace. In 2001, Russia refused to ratify the Budapest Convention, the first international treaty on cybercrime, calling it “too intrusive.”  For the latest draft, the Kremlin complained it is “oversaturated with human rights safeguards.” 

Make no mistake: A perfect treaty will not stop Russia, Iran, and China or other authoritarian regimes from attacking the West or repressing their own people in the information space. Enabling the Russians, Iranians, Chinese and others to use the United Nations to censor globally with the imprimatur of international law, however, would set back freedom and enable the Kremlin, Ayatollah Khamenei, and China to target dissidents. Washington should not allow its election season distractions to divert its attention. Too much is at stake.