With ransomware like ‘WannaCry’ sowing chaos worldwide and global powers accusing rivals of using cyberattacks to interfere in domestic politics, the latest edition of the world’s only book laying down the law in cyberspace could not be more timely.
The Tallinn Manual 2.0 is a unique collection of law on cyber-conflict, says Professor Michael Schmitt from the UK’s University of Exeter, who led work on the tome.
Published by Cambridge University Press and first compiled by a team of 19 experts in 2013, the latest updated edition aims to pin down the rules that governments should follow when doing battle in virtual reality.
The manual was among the hot topics this week as over 500 IT security experts from across the globe gathered at Nato’s Cycon cyber security conference in Tallinn. Launched in 2009, the annual event is organised by Nato’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence based in the Estonian capital.
In 2007, Estonia was among the first countries to suffer a massive cyber attack, with authorities in Tallinn blaming the Baltic state’s Soviet-era master Russia.
“The very next year, in the war between Russia and Georgia, again we saw a lot of cyber activity,” said Schmitt.
Estonia was targeted just three years after it joined Nato and the EU in 2004.
The attack raised a slew of serious questions about how to apply and enforce Nato’s Article 5 collective defence guarantee in cyberspace, said Schmitt, who also chairs the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law at the United States Naval War College.
“This book is intended to be a secondary source of law: it explains the law, but it doesn’t create it. States make law,” Schmitt said.
“My goal is that this book sits on the desk of every legal adviser for defence and foreign ministers, the intelligence services, so that legal advisers can sit with policy makers and say: in this situation, we can do this, or the law is not clear, you need to make a political decision here. — AFP
— By Michel Moutot
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
