European Cyberwar Proposal Ignites Debate at IGF
VILNIUS, Lithuania -- The growing arsenal for cyberwarfare in the hands of countries and their citizens and statements by some military officials, including those of the U.S., that attacks on the critical network infrastructure would justify armed responses has raised concerns among diplomats. When the Council of Europe presented a draft on “Duties of States” on protecting Internet resources at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), international law experts warned about possible consequences.
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The CoE draft proposal covers government duties to take “measures to prevent and respond to” interference with the Internet. It would hold governments liable for acts by their citizens. The draft said Internet users must be prevented from “involvement in cyber attacks and other forms of malicious use of the Internet.” It would bring international courts 36,672 pending court cases immediately, said Jovan Kurbilja, director of the Diplo Foundation, an EU-based Internet governance think tank. “This is a real number,” Kurbilja told us.
The draft would “lead to a reaction from governments to step up surveillance of their citizens in order to avoid incidents and being hold liable for it,” said William Drake, senior associate at the Center for International Governance of the Geneva Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies. He said deep packet inspection could well result.
Members of the CoE working group on the document said they were open to proposals for the document. “We wanted to provoke debate,” said Chairman Wolfgang Kleinwaechter. CoE Secretary General Maud de Boer-Buquicchio said, “The participation of the industry and civil society in shaping and implementing policies is a pre-condition for the exercise of their responsibilities by states.” The working group also proposed citizens’ rights on the Internet, and enshrining values such as openness and net neutrality.
ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom strongly opposed making the IGF a more “inter-governmental” organization. “Most Internet users -- businesses, service providers, non-profits and consumers -- would be shut out of the governance debate,” he said. “If governance were to become the exclusive province of nation states or captured by any other interests, we would lose the foundation of the Internet’s long-term potential and transformative value.” ICANN’s longstanding adversary, the ITU, also hailed the multi-stakeholder effort, though it had declined a recent request by Beckstrom to be admitted to the Plenipotentiary Conference as an observer.
Government representatives to IGF, including White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, confirmed their commitment to continuing the IGF into the future. Ravi Shanker, joint secretary at the Department of Information Technology in the Indian Ministry of Information Technology, called the IGF a “harbinger of change.”