Kerry: Internet 'Needs Rules to Be Able to Flourish and Work Properly'
Kerry: Internet 'Needs Rules to Be Able to Flourish and
Work Properly'
Calls for more international Internet laws.
2:15 PM, May 18, 2015 • By DANIEL HALPER
In a speech today in South Korea, Secretary of State John
Kerry said that the Internet "needs rules to be able to flourish and work
properly." This, according to Kerry, is necessary even for "a
technology founded on freedom."
Speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, Kerry
said that Internet policy is "a key component of our foreign policy."
Kerry made his remarks in the context of talking about
how international law is applicable to the Internet. "As I’ve mentioned,
the basic rules of international law apply in cyberspace. Acts of aggression
are not permissible. And countries that are hurt by an attack have a right to
respond in ways that are appropriate, proportional, and that minimize harm to
innocent parties. We also support a set of additional principles that, if
observed, can contribute substantially to conflict prevention and stability in
time of peace. We view these as universal concepts that should be appealing to
all responsible states, and they are already gaining traction," said Kerry.
"First, no country should conduct or knowingly
support online activity that intentionally damages or impedes the use of
another country’s critical infrastructure. Second, no country should seek
either to prevent emergency teams from responding to a cybersecurity incident,
or allow its own teams to cause harm. Third, no country should conduct or
support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets, or other
confidential business information for commercial gain. Fourth, every country
should mitigate malicious cyber activity emanating from its soil, and they
should do so in a transparent, accountable and cooperative way. And fifth,
every country should do what it can to help states that are victimized by a
cyberattack.
"I guarantee you if those five principles were
genuinely and fully adopted and implemented by countries, we would be living in
a far safer and far more confident cyberworld.
"But even with these principles, ensuring
international cyber stability will remain a work in progress. We still have a
lot of work to do to develop a truly reliable framework – based on
international law – that will effectively deter violations and minimize the
danger of conflict.
"To build trust, the UN Group of Governmental
Experts has stressed the importance of high-level communication, transparency
about national policies, dispute settlement mechanisms, and the timely sharing
of information – all of them, very sound and important thoughts. The bottom line
is that we who seek stability and peace in cyberspace should be clear about
what we expect and intend, and those who may be tempted to cause trouble should
be forewarned: they will be held accountable for their actions. The United
States reserves the right to use all necessary means, including economic, trade
and diplomatic tools, as appropriate in order to defend our nation and our
partners, our friends, our allies. The sanctions against North Korean officials
earlier this year are one example of the use of such a tool in response to
DPRK's provocative, destabilizing and repressive actions, including the
cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. Now, as the international community moves
towards consensus about what exactly constitutes unacceptable behavior in
cyberspace, more and more responsible nations need to join together to act
against disruptors and rogue actors.
"As we know, malicious governments are only part of
the cybersecurity problem. Organized crime is active in cyberspace. So are
individual con artists, unscrupulous hackers, and persons engaged in fraud.
Unfortunately, the relative anonymity of the internet makes it an ideal vehicle
for criminal activity – but not an excuse for working through the principles I
described to finding rules of the road and working so that the internet works
for everybody else. The resulting financial cost of those bad actors, the cost
of cybercrime, is already enormous, but so is the loss of trust in the internet
that every successful fraud or theft engenders."
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