Cyberlaw, cyber security law, internet of things and emerging global trends

Event report

[Read more session reports from WSIS Forum 2017]

In his opening of the workshop, moderator Mr Pavan Duggal (Advocate, Supreme Court of India, President, Cyberlaws.Net and Chairman, International Commission on Cyber Security Law) gave a comprehensive presentation on the current state of cyberlaw from a global perspective. Duggal started with examples of significant cyber-attacks, such as: WannaCry, attacks on top 5 Russian banks, the emergence of cyber squads, and electoral database breaches, to illustrate the necessity of a proper international regime featuring cyberlaw that is currently undergoing transformation. He said there is too much concentration on national frameworks and legal case-studies, however, global challenges should be addressed by global solutions, as local approaches will not be a good strategy to implement.

Duggal gave an overview of international developments in cyberlaw, featuring bilateral agreements between countries such as cyberpacts for ‘not hacking each other’. He also stressed the importance of Chinese, Russian, and EU initiatives for international norms for cyberspace, indicating the different types: classical binding norms, soft law, and national cybersecurity policies.

Furthermore, he highlighted the phenomena of cybersecurity law as part of a broader area of cyberlaw which deals with the legality of actions in cyberspace. Cybersecurity law deals with ‘all the legal, policy, and regulatory issues pertaining to cybersecurity, its protection, preservation, maintenance, and continued updates’.

Finally, Duggal discussed the main challenges facing cyber-law: attribution, encryption, anonymity, cyber-terrorism, mobile crimes, regulation of the dark web, Internet of things, big data, crypto currencies, 3D printing of guns, cloud computing. He also introduced the concept of ‘appification of society’ meaning that more and more apps are created for a vast majority of purposes.

Duggal then introduced the International Conference on Cyberlaw, Cybercrime & Cybersecurity which he is organising. In addition, he mentioned the work of the International Commission on Cybersecurity Law in achieving global consent on denominators for creating international cybersecurity law together with the International Telecommunication Union.

Mr Indrajit Banerjee (Director, Knowledge Societies Division, UNESCO) gave the UNESCO perspective on how to deal with very complex issues on the Internet that make a great impact on human lives. He noticed that UNESCO has 195 member-countries and to build any kind of consensus is actually a complicated task. It is important to have ‘some understanding of what is permissible and what is not’ and it is high time to contemplate how we can achieve a minimum working consensus to leverage Internet security while saving all rights and freedoms. Banerjee mentioned that UNESCO is preparing extensive reports on ethics, privacy, and freedom of expression, and he believes this should be open for debate.

Mr Paolo Cesarini (European Commission) gave the perspective on cybersecurity through the approach of data economy. He listed four priorities:

• Free flow of data – the European Commission is trying to prevent member states from creating any restrictions and barriers for data flows within their borders.
• Equal access to data for all – however the more access people have to data, the greater the risk of data breaches.
• Liability – contractual liability for business relations and non-contractual liability for business-consumers relations. Now liability is defined in terms of safety.
• The cybersecurity strategy released by the European Commission in 2013 and the Network Information System (NIS) Directive that requires companies to report on any cyber-incident faced.

Finally, Cesarini spoke about undergoing work for the creation of standards to provide certification that is needed to gain trust for consumers.

Mr Saakshar Duggal (Youth Coordinator, Centre Against Cyber Bullying) give a speech on the important aspects of cyber-bullying of the younger generation. The massive usage of social media has pointed out that cybersecurity is an issue to look at. There is a significant increase in number of cybercrimes targeted specifically at young people across the world. Instances like cyber-bullying tend to happen because people are careless and share their credentials, this often leads to cybersecurity breaches. The cybersecurity law should meet the expectations of young people to protect them.

Mr Alfredo Ronchi  (Secretary General, Multimedia for Education and employment through Integrated Cultural Initiatives (EC MEDICI) Framework) supported the concerns expressed by the previous speaker. Moreover, he raised the question of ownership of private information and illustrated it with the My data belongs to me initiative.

by Ilona Stadnik