[IGFmaglist] GGE meeting in New York

[avri doria]

Hi,

I cannot support this rending of the DC session.  This is not a sequence
of reports that can be sliced and diced. As the description and last
year's meeting indicate it is a discussion of the commonalities and
difference in the work of the various DCs as expressed in various papers
etc.  Slicing and dicing would destroy the session.

avri



On 26-Jun-17 14:17, Juan Fernandez wrote:
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> Some of you have asked for a copy of the draft Final Report.
>
> As you know about these meetings, in the last day the Chair circulated
> several versions, the last one in hard copy.
>
> On the other hand, this meeting was a closed meeting, so I am not sure
> if it is all right for me to divulge one of the working drafts.
>
> What I can do is to tell you the key elements of the disagreement:
>
> I will try to summarize:
>
> The 2013 GGE Final Report reflected the consensus of the Group that:
> "International law, and in particular the Charter of the United
> Nations, is applicable and is essential to maintaining peace and
> stability and promoting and open, secure, peaceful and accessible ICT
> environment."
>
> The 2015 GGE Final Report went a little bit further in para 28.c):
> "Underscoring the aspirations of the international community to the
> peaceful use of ICTs for the common good of mankind, and recalling
> that the Charter applies in its entirety, the Group noted the inherent
> right of States to take measures consistent with international law and
> as recognized in the Charter. The Group recognized the need for
> further study on this matter;"
>
> With this background we arrived to the 2017 GGE Final Report. In the
> discussions of the first three meetings two lines of thought emerged:
>
> One: that the Group should only make recommendations on cooperation,
> capacity building, etc., and regarding incidents in cyberspace, about
> its prevention and/or the peaceful settlement of disputes. This is, to
> reflect Chapter VI of the UN Charter and not going further.
>
> Another line of thought was that if all the above failed, then go to
> the application of chapter VI of the charter, that includes the well
> known Article 51. This is equivalent to recognize that cyberspace can
> become a battlefield, so this proposal also included the explicit
> reference to the principles of the International Humanitarian Law
> (IHL), that as you know is the "law of war".
>
> As you can see from the declaration of the Cuban expert, Cuba opposes
> this view as a matter of principle: cyberspace, and in particular the
> Internet should be an sphere of peace and not a theater of military
> operations.
>
> But even if this idea prevails, and it is accepted to have
> "countermeasures" without the use of force, or even to invoke Article
> 51 and respond with the use of force, the question arises: against who
> this countermeasures will be applied? As you know this has to do with
> the problem of "attribution" that is far from being solved.
>
> The draft report gave the State who alleges being a victim of a
> malicious use of ICT the right to unilaterally determine the
> attribution of the origin of that malicious use of ICT.
>
> As you know, in spite of all the regulations that are set forward in
> the various articles of Chapter VII of the UN Charter. in the real
> world there has been conflicts and wars triggered by reasons of a
> doubtful nature. This creation of pretexts for sanctions and
> retaliation has been so widespread that it has its own name: "false
> flag attacks".
>
> So: if this is done in the real world, in cyberspace, where it is not
> possible to point towards a "smoking gun" the chances for all this
> being manipulated for political reasons is to be considered.
>
> In the discussions of this topic in the GGE the term "political
> attribution"was mentioned.
>
> Another problem for the invocation of Article 51 in the context of ICT
> is that Article 51 is for when a State is under "armed attack". So
> this means that an malicious use of ICTis equivalent to an "armed
> attack". Some expert spoke about "thresholds"and "criteria" to make
> that equivalence, but obviously no consensus was reached. This is
> another topic, that alongside the attribution problem, needs to be
> solved in a multilateral (multistakeholder?) way, but definitely not
> unilaterally.
>
> I will stop here, by saying that for me it is obvious that the moment
> was not right for such decision to be taken. Also I believe that the
> discussion has to continue, not only at a governmental expert level,
> but also at a political level and with the participation off all the
> other stakeholders that have much to say in this matter.
>
> I believe that you will hear more about this, and I will not be
> surprised if the information will be manipulated in some form.
>
> Best regards
>
> Juan
>
>
>
>
>
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