Future war “may see attacks via computer viruses, worms, logic bombs, and trojan horses rather than bullets, bombs, and missiles."

[Steven Metz, Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-Modern Warfare, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2000, xiii]. 

The facilities of the Internet in politics

The Internet or the WWW (World Wide Web) became massively widespread around the globe in the late 1980s or more precisely since 1989 – the same year when the Berlin Wall collapsed and, therefore, enabled the Cold War 1.0 to enter the final stage of its end. That is why both of these historical events mark the start of the Turbo-Globalization Era in all spheres from economy to culture, in addition to politics.[1] With the growing importance of the Internet, it is quite understandable that it is becoming an arena of political and ideological rivalry with necessary growing implications concerning national security issues.[2]

The spread of mass media via the Internet followed by communications within the framework of cyber-space[3] enables more people, even in remote corners of the globe, to be informed (or misinformed) about world affairs, to form (or accept) opinions about certain events, and to be involved in politics in ways that some 35 years ago have been unimaginable. Today, even poor peasants in many parts of the world have access to the Internet which provides information and gives both government and anti-government groups a new way to struggle for their ideas, ideologies, and programs in order to indoctrinate the public. 

The Internet has already become the focal instrument of all in facilitating the exchange of different viewpoints, dissemination of information, fake news or propaganda, movement of electronic money, and finally the coordination of activities for the obvious reason that it is inexpensive and easily accessible. Bloggers with their weblogs are influencing the mass of people across the globe by transmitting both information and disinformation and opinion on the Internet.[4] After the end of Cold War 1.0, a new Cold War 2.0 started, in which the Great Powers started to adopt smart weapons to fight conventional wars, weapons that utilize new information and communication technologies like the Internet or cyberspace. A new type of warfare emerged – cyber warfare.[5] 

In terms of politics, the focal impact of the Internet can be summarized into four basic points:

1.     The real technical possibility of the Internet is to increase and improve the transparency of the government by free access to online content, official documents, and all kinds of governmental reports and viewpoints on different issues and problems.

2.     The ability of the Internet to increase the politically relevant set of information of both natures: factual and nonfactual.

3.     It has the power to organize and speed up the coordination of different interest groups, extremist groups, and the so-called civil society beyond something that was known before as traditional political areas and barriers. 

4.     The creation of new forms of criminal activities known as cybercrime, cyber-terrorism, or cyber-security problems.

In relation to the first point regarding the potential to increase transparency, governments, NGOs, and different institutions in global governance (such as the UN) have created several millions of web pages. These pages serve to provide political information in the form of official reports, viewpoints, comments, contact forms, and strategy rationalizations. Many governments established increasing targets for the maximum proportion of their communication with the citizens via the Internet.

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Nevertheless, if we are speaking about information flows, the Internet is offering for sure a cheap and easy platform for many types of populist movements, parties, or organizations seeking to indoctrinate and attract a possible voting audience at the elections.[6] One such very successful example, as a matter of illustration, was the US Democrats in the presidential election of Barack Obama in 2008. 

The facility of the Internet allows for greater communication of identity politics like for instance, those witnessed during the British referendum to leave the EU – Brexit.[7] However, another facility that the Internet offers in practice is the spreading of propaganda[8] by extremist persons or organizations for different purposes. One of such most blatant examples of misusing Internet facilities for the very political and/or ideological purposes is used by different radical groups for recruitment strategies. 

The Internet, in general, and social media, in particular, also provide powerful platforms for the greater dissemination of so-called fake news. The prevalence of uncorroborated news on social media platforms often stems from the popularity of views generated online, rather than from traditional independent channels of verification. Many experts would argue that both the promotion of fake news and targeted viewer profiling on the Internet (particularly on Twitter) had tremendously participated in the election of Donald Trump for US President in November 2016.  

One of the crucial power features of cyberspace is that it poses real challenges to governments as the Internet facilitates mobilization and coordination by professionals, freedom fighters, insurgents, criminals, and terrorists of all kinds. A good example of the use of the Internet against authoritarian regimes is the case of WikiLeaks in April 2010 when a video showed a US helicopter in Baghdad killing a dozen Iraqis including two journalists who appeared on the net.   

Cybercrime  

Cybercrime, in essence, refers to traditional types of crimes that just migrated to cyberspace (the Internet), such as money laundering or sexual exploitation. However, cybercrime also includes internet-specific criminal activities like illegal access to electronic information, trade, national or political secrets, and finally the creation and spread of dangerous computer viruses which can impose political or national-security harmfulness. 

Cybercrime committed by individuals or state-sponsored cyberattacks undoubtedly poses serious threats to the international community in general or a particular part of it for the very reason that they were originally designed to degrade, deny, or even destroy information residents in computers or to compromise computers themselves. Such activities of cyberattacks or cyber-terrorism are committed with the ultimate task of inflicting disruption, destruction, or human loss.     

Cybercrime can be a foremost threat to individuals, industry, or/and political organizations. However, in political terms, cybercrime can question the proper function of the state and its political system if the latter persistently fails to control such criminal activity or if it suffers breakdowns in cybersecurity. 

One of the very specific types of cybercrime is cyber-terrorism. It basically refers to the (mis)use of Internet facilities by different organizations to promote terrorist propaganda and activities. Terrorist groups can use the Internet as a domain to commit cyberattacks by, for example, targeting networks or computers that belong to the governmental, public, or military infrastructures. The most notorious cyber program used in cybercrimes so far is the so-called trojan horse – a program in which a code is inserted into a program or data so that it can take control of a computer with the intent to damage it. However, an additional danger can be posed by computer trap doors or back doors – deliberate holes in computer programs that are used to gain unauthorized access to a computer or a computer network for the reasons of spying or/and causing destruction of the computer system.[9]

Moreover, the Internet can be (mis)used to perpetrate acts of terror that produce physical or mental damage, but, in extreme cases, cyber-terrorists can incur individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law where their conduct is understood as supporting war crime, aggression, crimes against humanity, or genocide. In war terminology, cyberwar is the use of a system of information for the purpose of exploiting, disrupting, or destroying an enemy’s military or civilian computer networks with the ultimate aim of disrupting those systems and the tasks they perform.[10] Cyberwar is war in cyberspace that is already a new fifth military domain after land, sea, air, and space. 

The legal measures against cybercrime

During the last two decades, cybercrimes of all types have been increasingly understood to be war-like attacks on states and their infrastructure and, therefore, are regulated mostly by the international legal framework relating to the use of force or, in the case committed at the time of war (armed conflict), by international humanitarian law. 

All countries, or groups of countries, which are considered to belong to the Great Powers’ bloc implemented certain legal and practical measures to counter cybercrimes on their authorized territory. One of the examples is the Council of Europe, which adopted the Convention on Cyber-crime in 2001 and 2004, which established a common criminal policy among the member states by both adopting an appropriate legislative framework and encouraging transnational cooperation on the global level in the practice of beating cybercrime in all spheres, including politics. If we can speak in more precise legal terms, according to the legal framework of the European Council concerning beating cybercrime, the member states should criminalize illegal access and illegal interference, and at the same time, they should cooperate by all possible legal and practical means in their examination and prosecution policies.[11]   

It is a clear decision by the UN that such cyber-activities are undermining the global or regional peace process and security and, therefore, the organization called all its member states to prohibit incitement to commit terrorism, take as possible as active measures for the prevention of incitement, and deny safe haven to persons or group of persons who are guilty of incitement. Nevertheless, it is clear that any kind of adopted cybersecurity measure must comply with the protection of international standards of human rights like the freedom of speech and association or the right to privacy. 

As a matter of fact, within the legal framework of international agreements aimed at the suppression of terrorism in general, and more particularly on the Internet, states are subject to many international legal obligations that require their struggle against cyber-terrorism within the Internet space that they control. It is, for instance, the case of the UNSC, which adopted several resolutions by which all the UN member states are required to act against terrorist activities within their borders, including cyber-terrorism.

References:

[1] Michael Meyer, The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall, New York: Scribner, 2009; Brian McCullough, How the Internet happened: From Netscape to the iPhone, New York−London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018. 
[2] See more in [John Erikkson, Giampiero Giacomello, “The Information Revolution, Security, and International Relations: (IR) Relevant Theory?”, International Political Science Review, 27/3, 2006, 221−224].
[3] Cyber-space is the “electronic medium of computer networks in which online communication takes place” [Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second Edition, London−New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2012, 575].
[4] Daniel W. Drezner, Henry Farrell, “Web of Influence”, Foreign Policy, 145, 2004, 32−40.
[5] About cyber-war, see more in [Richard A. Clarke, Robert Knake, Cyber War, New York: HarperCollins, 2010]. This book gives a picture of cyber-war and its capabilities which afford potential enemies.
[6] See, for instance [Pipa Norris, Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019].
[7] Brexit is the abbreviated term by the British, meaning literary shorthand for the British leaving the European Union. Brexit refers to the debates in the direct connections with the June 23, 2016 referendum for the UK to exit the EU. The Brexit referendum became a debate between two camps in the UK – those for the British leaving the EU vs. those for the British standing in the EU. About the Brexit issue, see more in [Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin, Paul Whiteley, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017].
[8] The term propaganda historically originated in an office of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican charged with the propagation of the (Roman Catholic) faith – de propaganda fide. The term propaganda entered common usage in the 1930s in order to describe at that time the authoritarian regimes to achieve total subordination of knowledge to the policy of the state. Based on the politics of different kinds of authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes in Europe to develop legitimacy and social control by the centralized governmental institutions, propaganda soon came to be directed toward the populations of other states (usually the neighbors), provoking reactions from the other states. Therefore, for instance, the UK established the Ministry of Information. Such ministries employed print, radio, film, graphic art, and the oral word in order to justify the official policy of their governments (the White Propaganda) but at the same time to beat the enemy’s propaganda (the Black Propaganda). Propaganda was quite important in international relations during the Cold War 1.0, especially via radio stations like Radio Free Europe or Voice of America which have been propagating the official values of the Western political liberal democracy and market economy. Today, Western political propaganda either via the Internet or other technical means is mainly directed against Russia and China in the forms of (extreme) Russophobia and Sinophobia. See more about propaganda in [Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works, Princeton, US−Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2015].      
[9] See in more detail in [Jonathan Kirshner (ed.), Globalization and National Security, New York: Routledge, 2006].
[10] Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second Edition, London−New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2012, 575.
[11] See more in [Robert W. Taylor, et al, Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism, Pearson, 2018].