Cyber Conflicts: International Treaties

So where do the world will go from here? So far I've talked about everything that is bleak, intransigent and undoable. But all is not that bad. Countries are working hard. They have started to recognize the importance of working on cyber-warfare treaties and other measures to basically improve the application of cyber laws. And there's a great desire within the international community to find a common ground and negotiate a cyber warfare treaty that will limit the use and development of cyber warfare capabilities. Very good, verifiable and effective.

It is not feasible, however, given the current political environment of states who continue to build cyber arsenals and continue to blame each other for attacks.

While international legislations who address cyber crime have made some progress in producing a treaty, others should negotiate treaties to stop Initiation of cyber war, constrained states can conduct a cyber war, once it has begun, our limit cyber war capabilities have not been successful.

Developing universal rules, or laws governing conduct of cyberspace, presents a very challenging problem for the world states. That is rooted in the core definition of sovereignty, defenses, and legal systems as there are differences in societal norms.

Each state has a different legal system with diverse laws, different definitions of crime, and different penalties for the same crime.

Each state's laws are based on societal values, political institutions, social norms which has been developed, as I mentioned, through centuries of history.

And instead of facing the reality of globalization, the politicians continue to maintain their hold, their control on their own countries rather than trying to address international problem. Because their local domestic politics is way more important then it is for them to deal with their international problems. However, there will be a time when we will have a catastrophic incidents or incident that will move the world community into establishing the laws. The 2001 Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime entered into force in 2004.

However, ten years after that, it has not been signed and ratified by several key CEO member states such as Russia and Turkey. Although the conventions are open to non-Council of Europe member states, and several have ratified it, including Australia, Japan, and the United States. A total of only 42 of the 193 members states of the United Nations are acceded to this convention.

The main point of contention is jurisdictional access. The internet has no borders. However, in order for law enforcement authorities to successfully apprehend, prosecute, and punish perpetrators of transnational cyber crimes, authorities must get access to track criminal activities across the entire Internet which is unfettered by states and jurisdictional boundaries.

The justification for unfettered access to the data is the volatility of data and delays in handing over investigations to law enforcement authorities of other countries.

Opponents of unfettered data access argue that it is a violation of sovereignty. Distrust among states built with centuries of conflict and by diversity and societal norms, is hard to bridge in a short time.

Lacking provisions for unfettered access to singular members jurisdictions, the Budapest treaty is becoming obsolete and increasingly irrelevant. In 2011, Russia put forward the Yekaterinburg Treaty that focuses on cyber warfare. Although it addresses the issues of cyber warfare and brings up issue of confident building, it does not have the potential to become universally acceptable either.

Some regional efforts have seen more traction, such as those of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, through which countries like Russia and China have built some consensus on governing principles of behavior in cyberspace. However, there's still a large gap between countries, in terms of their position.

There are two main points to note here. One, would a country like to be handicapped by agreeing to a treaty to not be able to deliver cyber weapons?

Second, a cynical view would be to go ask for us to state that the laws are for the weak countries, they don't apply to the strong.

Would the militarily stronger countries use these weapons and deny culpability while prosecuting the weaker countries base on ambiguity in attribution? So again, we really need to look at the equity here in terms of what different countries are able to do.

Initially the thought was, that the cyber spaces are big equalizer. When every country can have the same weapons, the same level of techniques, however this is again becoming a question of haves and have-nots. The countries which have resources are basically, have large armies of people working on cyber-weapons. While the countries which can't afford it are still basically scouting around for simple tools and weapons from the internet. So again, there's a huge disparity that is starting to emerge even in cyberspace, as is conventional weapons.