[LINK] Formulating National Security in Cyberspace

[Tom Worthington]

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where an 
international research project on "Political Ecology in Cyberspace" is 
being launched.  This research uses techniques of complex systems and 
natural ecology. The researchers are asking for input from the community 
and will reach out via blogs and other on-line forms.

Professor Paul Cornish from University of Exeter UK, argued that 
cyberspace should be treated as a strategic space. Professor Roger 
Bradbury,  National Security College at ANU expressed concern about the 
Internet being balkanized with countries such s China separating their 
national systems from the global network.

One of the audience members commented that the Internet was built by 
engineers and and that might cause an impediment to security. I found 
this discussion of balkanization and engineers acting without reference 
to the public interest troubling. The term "internet" refers to a 
"Network of Networks", with "The Internet" as the global example of 
this. Those designing the Internet did not so in isolation from issues 
of governance, that was key to the system.

I suggest researchers need to first look at how the Internet was created 
and is now governed. Professor Fred Cate , Director of the Center for 
Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, pointed out that 
most of the Internet is run by non-government organizations. He argued 
that the law and governance was lagging actual use of the Internet. 
However, this is not my experience.

When advocating the use of the Internet in Australia in the 1990s, 
myself and others considered the governance and legal implications. In 
my day job I had to devise policies for the use of the Internet and the 
world Wide web by the Department of Defence. This turned out to be 
relativity easy, identifying existing polices, laws and guidelines and 
interpreting these where necessary. The general assumption which many 
people in government and academia made, that public utilities are 
administered primarily by government turned out not to be true. In 
practice, most public services are provided by non-government entities 
following guidelines and standards written by non-government bodies. 
This approach-was extended to the Internet and proved resilient.

Governments and researchers who want to impose top-down government 
control of the Internet in order to protect democracy are missing the point.

More at: 
http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2013/11/formulating-national-security-in.html


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/