{"id":1701,"date":"2006-01-01T09:06:49","date_gmt":"2006-01-01T13:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/site\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2010-10-21T23:40:33","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T03:40:33","slug":"issue_47-1_brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/2006\/01\/issue_47-1_brown\/","title":{"rendered":"A Proposal for an International Convention To Regulate the Use of Information Systems in Armed Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Introduction<\/span><\/strong>*<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">One of the greatest challenges of law is keeping up with the advancement <\/span>of  technology. In this respect, international law is no different. Indeed,  the process of creating international law is hampered by constraints  that do not affect the making of domestic law. In an autocratic state,  the rule of law is the will of the ruler and is enforced by the ruler.  In a democratic state, the rule of law is a composite of the diverse  opinions of legislators who have come together to forge a principle that  carries the support of the majority. That norm is then applied to the  entire state and enforced by the government on its people. The law of  nations, however, is enforceable only by the nations themselves, making  the creation of norm-creating law more difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">In  responding to the advancement of weaponry, the international community  has struggled to promulgate standards of conduct in a timely manner that  carry nearly universal support and adherence. On the heels of the first  use of poison gas during World War I came the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol,  regulating the use of gas and \u201cbacteriological\u201d warfare. However, the  Hague Rules of Aerial Warfare, crafted in the aftermath of the first use  of aircraft in armed conflict, is a dead letter. It took nearly fifty  years to formulate a total ban on biological weapons in the form of the  1972 Biological Weapons Conven<span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">tion and an additional  twenty years to devise a comprehensive treaty outlawing the use of  chemical weapons with the passage of the 1993 Chemical Weapons  Convention. On the other hand, some rules of warfare have been rather  ahead of their time, such as the treaty banning the use of environmental  modification techniques in warfare, the protocol banning weapons whose  fragments cannot be detected by X-ray, and the protocol banning the use  of blinding lasers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Overall, the body of <em>jus in bello<\/em> has been able to adapt to the development of new means of warfare  remarkably well. For example, armed forces have applied the rules set  forth in the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare to air warfare with  relative ease. The basic principles of military necessity,  proportionality, humanity, chivalry, and distinction are not  situation-specific; they govern all use of force everywhere. Therein  lies the problem inherent in the emergence of cyberspace as a medium of  warfare: Cyberspace is nowhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Computer  technology has advanced to the point where military forces now have the  capability to in\u00baict injury, death, and destruction via cyberspace. Not  all of the injury is physical. Using techniques that disrupt automated  systems or destroy or alter data, computers that fall into the wrong  hands are capable of doing long-lasting personal and economic damage to  military and civilians alike. The highly destructive scenarios that  various authors on cyberwar have theorized, as well as the potential use  of cyberwar techniques <span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">in asymmetrical warfare,  underscore the need for an unambiguous standard of conduct for  information warfare that will be universally recognized and respected\u2014a  cyber-<em>jus in bello<\/em>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">This  Article will examine the principles and specific areas that a  comprehensive body of international law regulating information warfare  must cover. It will explore the tension between the needs of military  forces to engage in information warfare and the rights of  non-participants to safety and security. In doing so, the Article  attempts to fashion a legal standard that is palatable to the major  participants in information warfare. To that end, a hypothetical  convention, Regulating the Use of Information Systems in Armed Conflict,  is presented at the end of this work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>* This excerpt does not include citations.  To read the entire article, including supporting notes, please download  the PDF.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the greatest challenges of law is keeping up with the advancement of technology. In this respect, international law is no different. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-1701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-print-archives","tag-foreign-affairs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZu3S-rr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/ilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}