Tallinn Manual Restrictions on Cyber Warfare
Hykkönen, Otto (2024)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024041718992
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024041718992
Tiivistelmä
Digitization expands the whole gamut of human activities. Warfare is also experiencing digitization in the form of introduction of cyber warfare. Cyber warfare and cyber operations in general are an ever-expanding field of warfare. Is the new front of cyberspace a wild west outside the reach of international humanitarian law? Is International humanitarian law applicable to cyber warfare? If so, to what extent? Is data, the stuff of cyberspace, even an object? These are the questions that the current thesis seeks answers. The study at hand aims to answer them via scrutiny of the Tallinn Manual, a collection of international humanitarian law norms collated by NATO’s Cyber Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence, and the writings of esteemed scholars in the field. The study finds that the cyberspace is not a free-forall zone but that international humanitarian law does, indeed, apply to cyber warfare as well. The crux is the understanding of the word “attack”, which the current law ties to its effects outside cyberspace. Cyber attacks thus understood, are restricted by principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality. Where the current law is not futureproofed is in the case of objecthood of data. Currently, data is only protected as per its use by other protected entities. The study finds that the understanding of an object in the 1987 commentary to Additional Protocol I as something tangible and visible does not reflect the reality of information, the destruction of which releases energy implying physical existence in a similar manner to other objects that may also lack tangibility and visibility.
Kokoelmat
- 513 Oikeustiede [119]