Conflicts, Crimes and Regulations in Cyberspace

Sebastien-Yves Laurent

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781786306869
• eBook ISBN: 9781119885085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

The study of cyberspace is relatively new within the field of social sciences, yet interest in the subject is significant. Conflicts, Crimes and Regulations in Cyberspace contributes to the scientific debate being brought to the fore by addressing international and methodological issues, through the use of case studies. This book presents cyberspace as a socio-technical system on an international level. It focuses on state and non-state actors, as well as the study of strategic concepts and norms. Unlike global studies, the socio-technical approach and "meso" scale facilitate the analysis of cyberspace in international relations. This is an area of both collaboration and conflict for which specific modes of regulation have appeared.

1
The United States, States and the False Claims of the End of the Global Internet

1.1. Introduction¹

The end of the 1990s and the 2000s saw a great debate in international social sciences, which focused on the effects of globalization on states. Susan Strange (1996) was the first to write of the irreversible weakening of the state, while others have emphasized its strong resistance (Krasner 1999) to the phenomenon of globalization. Yet others have even suggested that the state is being strengthened (Cohen 2005).

In this chapter, written 20 years later, we would like to revisit this debate, which does not appear to be outdated, by taking as a point of observation one of the manifestations of globalization, namely, the development of information technologies in a global system formerly called the internet, now more extensive and called “cyberspace”. Halfway through the 2000s, at a time when the internet was still highly collaborative and barely affected by “cyber insecurity”, two American international lawyers, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, put forward the idea of the return of the state to the internet in their celebrated book, Who Controls the Internet? (Goldsmith and Wu 2006). Two years earlier, the political scientist Daniel Drezner had indicated that the internet was a “tough test for state-centric theories of international relations” (Drezner 2004, p. 479). These authors, and many others after them, postulated on a form of original incompatibility between the state form and the internet.

In this chapter, we return to the attitude of states toward cyberspace, by giving a certain temporal depth to our subject. In order to address this question, we believe it necessary to set out a number of preliminary definitions and semantic clarifications. In this chapter, we will approach cyberspace as a sociotechnical system, that is to say, a social collective “of elements in dynamic interaction”², which thus creates a system organized around digital technologies. Indeed, we believe it fundamental to underline from a methodological point of view that what gives consistency to the international dimension of cyberspace is the mobilization of social actors around digital technologies. Whatever the type and diversity of these actors, they organize themselves de facto through their interactions as a system whose nature takes a social form (Simmel 1908). Moreover, we will adopt the canonical approach of cyberspace as being composed of the assembly of three layers: the physical (material infrastructures), logical (applications) and semantic/cognitive (meaningful contents) layers, with the “cyber-digital” being the assembly of the three (Ventre 2014a).

1.2. The creation of the internet and the development of cyberspace by the United States

Internationally, management of the old telecommunications systems since the 19th century had taken the form of cooperation between states. In contrast, the internet and cyberspace are international telecommunications systems that originated in the United States and are still under US technical and economic control.

Attempts to transform these sociotechnical systems, under the leadership of the United Nations during the 2000s, have not succeeded in challenging this state of affairs.

1.2.1. The first international telecommunications systems developed by all states

When technical progress in the 19th century led to the birth of information technologies (electric telegraph, telephone, submarine cables and wireless), the major European states played a decisive role, either by investing in the field, by forcing the private sector to do so or by deciding to set up state monopolies (Griset 1991; Headrick 1991). In Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the United States, governments quickly turned these technologies into tools to serve their security needs and their desire for expansion, with police and military administrations being the first to equip themselves with, and to control the new means.

What could be termed the first information and communication technologies (ICTs) were, in fact born from states which were the actors of their internationalization. Indeed, they encouraged the formation of the very first international administrations created specifically to administer ICTs: the International Telegraph Union (1868), the Universal Postal Union (1874), the Central Office for International Transport (1890) and the International Radiotelegraph Union (1906). In the age of nationalism, these international administrations ensured the physical development of technical networks and gave rise to international relational networks around ICTs, which led William J. Drake to speak of the establishment, from that time on, of a NetWorld Order (Drake 2008). From then, international governance of telecommunications emerged, based on state actors. Despite the polarization of the international system at the end of the 19th century, around two major antagonistic alliance systems, international unions and offices accompanied the growth of information flows and fostered the adoption of the first global technical norms and standards. Thus, the international adoption of Morse code in 1865 by states was the first technical standard that structured international information in a lasting way and thus encouraged the first globalization of information and the birth of short time.

1.2.2. The creation and development of the internet by the United States

A century later, the situation of international communications is totally different and, from the point of view of the role of states, the contrast is striking. The emergence of a new wave of ICTs, thanks to computers and digital formats that have given rise to what is known as cyberspace, has taken hold without, with the exception of the United States, the involvement of states.

We will not be revisiting the classic works that have established the origins of the internet in detail here (Castells 2001; Goldsmith and Wu 2006; Tréguer 2019); although the origin of the global network was more c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Introduction
• 1 The United States, States and the False Claims of the End of the Global Internet
• 2 Cybersecurity in America: The US National Security Apparatus and Cyber Conflict Management
• 3 Separation of Offensive and Defensive Functions: The Originality of the French Cyberdefense Model Called into Question?
• 4 The Boundary Between Cybercrime and Cyberwar: An Uncertain No-Man’s Land
• 5 Cyberdefense, the Digital Dimension of National Security
• 6 Omnipresence Without Omnipotence: The US Campaign Against Huawei in the 5G Era
• 7 The Issue of Personal and Sovereign Data in the Light of an Emerging “International Law of Intelligence”
• 8 International Cybersecurity Cooperation
• 9 Cyberdefense and Cybersecurity Regulations in the United States: From the Failure of the “Comprehensive Policy” to the Success of the Sectoral Approach
• List of Authors
• Index
• End User License Agreement