{"id":543952,"date":"2010-04-26T18:46:33","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T22:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opiniojuris.org\/?p=12157"},"modified":"2010-04-26T18:46:33","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T22:46:33","slug":"an-sos-for-cyberspace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/543952","title":{"rendered":"An SOS for Cyberspace?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Duncan Hollis <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My colleague David Post <\/a>and I have an op-ed in today’s National Law Journal<\/a>.\u00a0 In it, we challenge the sufficiency of existing responses to cyberattacks, whether in terms of pushing for heightened security, more criminal law enforcement or applying the laws of war (if applicable<\/a>).\u00a0 Criminal law (and the laws of war for that matter) depends on identifying and holding actors accountable for their actions.\u00a0 Given attribution problems that give cyberattackers virtual anonymity,\u00a0we argue that these methods cannot effectively respond to such attacks, let alone deter them.\u00a0 So long as the Internet’s architecture\u00a0preserves an attacker’s identity, we claim that the law will need to look to alternative deterrent and regulatory models for regulating threats without regulating who (or what) causes them.\u00a0 To that end, we flag\u00a0the use of the SOS to deal with threats to life and property on the high seas as a useful analogue.\u00a0 The SOS works, not by regulating the cause of any harm (e.g., hurricanes, pirates, equipment failure), but by imposing a duty to assist on all in a position to help when they hear the SOS call.\u00a0 In doing so, the SOS mitigates the threat,\u00a0with the assistance provided often saving lives and protecting property.\u00a0\u00a0We argue a duty to assist could have similar functions in cyberspace, mitigating the effects of cyberattacks even where we cannot identify (and thus regulate) the actual attacker(s).\u00a0 Indeed, we believe that if the duty to assist actually does mitigate the harm from certain cyberattacks (i.e., by ensuring bandwidth is available to overcome directed denial of service attacks, or by cutting off the pathway of an attack) it might actually deter attackers from launching those attacks in the first place.\u00a0 In such situations, attackers may come to recognize that the desired effect cannot be achieved and not bother to even try to attack.\u00a0 Or, if the attacker is an entity that might actually fall under a duty to assist (e.g., a national government) it might think twice before attacking in the first place.\u00a0 After all, why make a mess that you know you’ll have a public duty to remediate?\u00a0 For more details, you can read our op-ed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Duncan Hollis My colleague David Post and I have an op-ed in today’s National Law Journal.\u00a0 In it, we challenge the sufficiency of existing responses to cyberattacks, whether in terms of pushing for heightened security, more criminal law enforcement or applying the laws of war (if applicable).\u00a0 Criminal law (and the laws of war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}