Monday, October 12, 2015

Amending the Geneva Conventions to account for the technology age

A post on The Register asks: Cyberwar rules of engagement: Military, law bods mull update.  Is 'wartime metadata collection' a human rights violation?

Plans are underway to update a putative Geneva convention for cyberwar, put together by experts in international law and backed by an Estonian-based NATO-run military think tank.

The Tallinn Manual 2.0 is on track for publication in the second half of 2016, following a drafting conference of legal experts in the Estonian capital this week. The original manual provided a handbook on how principles of international law could be applied to conflict in cyberspace, which military strategists consider to be the fifth dimension of warfare (land, air, sea and space being the other four).

The original Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare ruled that the Stuxnet worm may have been "armed attack", as previously reported. Victims of similar future attacks would be legally clear to retaliate proportionately in the immediate aftermath of an assault as an act of self-defence, in order to frustrate follow-up assaults.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are subject to moderation and must be submitted under your real name. Anonymous comments will not be posted (even though the form seems to permit them).