What Lawyers Want: Legally Significant Questions that Only IT Specialists can Answer

摘要

During the last decade international lawyers and IT specialists are brought together to conferences on issues of cyber-security. With various topics covered from such different perspectives, a clash of educations occurs. Lawyers are rarely able to understand the deep technological discussions, while legal presentations might seem too philosophical for the IT professionals, leaving them wondering, what do lawyers want and why In this environment legal questions that cannot be answered without the deep technological knowledge possessed by the computer experts, should be formulated carefully and very precisely. Therefore, with emphasis on the jus in bello, this article aims to outline a list of issues that inevitably require joint lawyer-IT specialists dialogue and explain their significance from the point of view of international law. These issues include possibilities for digital "marking" of internationally protected objects online required under the existing humanitarian law, developing a "distinctive sign "for cyber-combatants, forewarning the enemy of incoming attacks ("carrying arms visibly") and re-evaluating the concept of "vicinity" to dangerous installations in the context of cyberspace.