The collision between ICANN’s Whois regime and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took a decisive turn May 25, 2018, when ICANN filed injunction proceedings against EPAG, a German registrar affiliated with Tucows. EPAG had notified ICANN that as of May 25 it would no longer collect administrative and technical...
What can we do to stop the militarization of cybersecpace by States? One answer might be convening a transnational cyber attribution organization. States need to be held accountable if they carry out cyber attacks. However, up until now, this has not been feasible. The infeasibility does not mean that cyberattribution...
In Chinese online discussions, many people are using the expression “one sword throat-slashing strike.” [一剑封喉] This forbidding term refers to the United States’ seven-year export ban on China’s second-largest telecom supplier, ZTE, which threatens its very existence and has put the company “in a state of shock.” In the Chinese...
“Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Martha: Amen.” Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Since February, the prominent security reporter Brian Krebs has been writing on his widely-read blog, Krebs on Security, that...
States are stuck in a “cybersecurity dilemma”. They can’t reliably distinguish between other states’ offensive and defensive activities. E.g., surveillance or probing being used by a state for defense might look like offensive measures to those states being surveilled or probed. As a result, cyber powers engage in a never...
I remember one of my first conversations about ICANN and WHOIS General Data Protection Regulation compliance with the ICANN CEO. The CEO told me (as he repeatedly told others) that ICANN should consult with the Data Protection Authorities about how to comply with GDPR. I agreed. The boundaries of WHOIS...
Last week, a 3-day conference was held at Harvard University’s Belfer center focused on fortifying election security and digital democracy. IGP contributors Karim Farhat and Karl Grindal competed in an Information Operations hackathon, winning first place in the policy category. The panel of judges was comprised of former Secretary of...
At the International Studies Association convention in San Francisco, at an especially interesting panel on cybersecurity, we were privileged to hear excerpts from a forthcoming book by Michael Warner, Historian for the United States Cyber Command, and John Childress. Warner examined the last 20 years of U.S. Russia relationships in...
What's going on in China? I was invited there for a series of lectures at Beijing’s Communication University of China (CUC) during the week of March 18. Thanks to Professor Xu Peixi, who organized the tour, I got a chance to meet most of the academics, researchers and policy analysts...
Background The international trade in hardware, software, and content complicates many cybersecurity challenges. Domestic regulations and enforcement may fall short of their intended aims when foreign criminals and governments are out of their jurisdiction, and cheap insecure technologies proliferate worldwide. In response, some security experts have looked to restricting trade...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
