REGULATING CYBER BEHAVIOR: SOME INITIAL REFLECTIONS ON CODES OF CONDUCT AND CONFIDENCE-BUILDING MEASURES

摘要

This Permanent Monitoring Panel has from its inception geared its work to the overriding issues of harnessing cyber conflict, and to the organizational challenge of creating a universal order of cyberspace. We were convinced that the cyber sphere is, if not a lawless space, at least one that lacks a comprehensive legal framework to manage and control the all-pervasive, infinite potential of digital technologies. Consequently, there is little or no ability to effectively control the escalation of cyber conflict, and there is no common understanding of how the existing norms of international law would apply -if at all. A dangerous, precarious state of affairs, which our group has never ceased to analyse and denounce. From the beginning of our activity, we have argued that a comprehensive international legal framework is required, to fill this void, establishing norms and rules for adequate, responsible state behaviour in order to ensure and guarantee the peaceful use of cyber space. Our first major document, "Toward a Universal Order of Cyberspace: Managing Threats from Cybercrime to Cyberwar" reflects that approach. At that time, we ambitiously called for an UN-led effort to create a Comprehensive Law of Cyberspace. Our erstwhile colleague Ambassador Kamal has later fleshed out this project in a book "The Law of Cyber-Space: An Invitation to the Table of Negotiations". Yet, we were not the first ones to embrace such a complex endeavor. At the United Nations, Russia has as of 1998,in a series of UN draft resolutions, advocated a Cyber Treaty, proposing detailed, although conflictual and probably unimplementable contents. These draft resolutions became an annual exercise in frustration: the Russian initiative was for many years rejected by a number of Western countries, but yet had the undoubted merit of keeping the argument alive that a major normative effort was required. ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré has early on, and then repeatedly, called for a "Global Cyber Treaty", laying out some essential provisions. He has thus added an authoritative UN voice to the quest for a normative framework. Many other advocates for comprehensive treaty-making could be cited.5