Striving for an International Consensus on Cyber Security: Lessons from the 20th Century
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Samir Saran |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12317 |
Striving for an International Consensus on
Cyber Security: Lessons from the 20th Century
Samir Saran
Observer Research Foundation
In many ways, the benefits afforded by cyberspace are also
its most potent fault lines. The ubiquity, anonymity and free-
dom available in cyberspace furthers many civil liberties. At
the same time, the interconnectedness of cyberspace makes
it very difficult to regulate, leaving significant portions of
the global population, economy and infrastructure vulnera-
ble to abuse. The common strand within debates relating to
the management of cyberspace concerns the difficulty of
arriving at a global consensus on rules of the road for this
medium. Many conversations on the best way to secure
cyberspace are premised on the flawed conflation of the
security of the network with the security of the content it
hosts. Is it connectivity itself we are securing, or banking
transactions, or freedom of expression, or all these
elements? Ultimately nations will want both network and
data security, but on the specific issue of how content is
protected –and indeed, what content is protected –there
is bound to be wide divergence among countries.
Despite the growth of the Internet and the interconnected,
global nature of this network of networks, national laws, terri-
toriality and sovereignty remain relevant concepts. While data
flows seamlessly across most borders, the rights of those
sending and receiving information are determined largely by
national legislation. The problem of harmonising divergent
laws is acute given the lack of an international cyber regime.
Even if such a regime were to emerge, it is debatable whether
countries would align their domestic laws overnight.
Take the example of international human rights instru-
ments, which have gained wide acceptance among the
comity of nations. They include the United Nations’Interna-
tional Bill of Human Rights, which is made up of the Univer-
sal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Inter-
national Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
bers of the international community.’(UN, 1968) The two
covenants are legally binding for signatories; 168 nations
are parties to the ICCPR (UN General Assembly, 1966a) and
164 are parties to the ICESCR (UN General Assembly, 1966b).
Despite international consensus on the basic rights and
responsibilities of individuals and states, many states con-
tinue to engage in actions that deviate from it. A case in
point is Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Its stringent
‘stop the boats’policy (Farrell, 2015) aims to prevent asylum
seekers (including children) from reaching Australia by inter-
cepting them at sea and either diverting them to detention
centres in other countries or simply turning them back.
Compounding the issue, Australia has implemented an ‘in-
formation blackout’on the conditions in these detention
centres, with employees facing time in jail if they make any
disclosures (Bongiorno, 2015). Australia’s policy has drawn a
lot of international attention, with the UN Special Rappor-
teur on Torture finding that ‘various aspects of Australia’s
asylum seeker policies violate the Conventions Against Tor-
ture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment.’
1
The response of Australian Prime Minister
Tony Abbott was to say that Australians are ‘sick of being
lectured to by the United Nations,’and that the UN should
‘give some credit to the Australian government’(Cox, 2015)
for stopping the boats and thereby preventing deaths at
sea. Other cases in which sovereign concerns override inter-
national commitments abound, and may even shape
national interpretations of international law. What does this
state of affairs mean for the governance of the Internet?
The ubiquity of the Internet means that the types of inci-
dents, violations and issues to be considered are numerous.
The possibility of creating and implementing a comprehen-
sive global treaty that could define illegality and desirable
conduct across these issues is remote. There is some inter-
national agreement about the illegality of copyright infringe-
ment, prostitution and defamation, for example, but
national laws vary on specifics –the illegality of streaming
vs downloading,
2
or prostitution vs solicitation (see MacKin-
non, 2011) or whether defamation is a civil or criminal
offence.
3
Given this high degree of variation across a
plethora of cyber issues, a global treaty that would satisfy
all countries would be so weakly or ambiguously worded as
to be worthless in practice and impossible to enforce.
The key takeaway from this is that internationalism can
only do so much. Compare cybercrime to other transna-
tional crimes and business losses –in the offline world,
there are multiple governance mechanisms and multilateral
agreements in place, but they have a strong and viable
bilateral backbone.
4
Their implementation takes place bilat-
erally through extradition treaties and other legal agree-
ments. The centrality of bilateral relations to the functioning
of the international community cannot be overstated. Even
in the digital sphere, governments have begun to enter into
bilateral arrangements.
One option for effective cyber governance could be to
build on the successes of bilateral arrangements by using the
same components to create a strong multilateral framework.
Global Policy (2016) 7:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12317 ©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 1 . February 2016 93
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