A think tank report about extending civilian protections during wartime into cyberspace presented to world leaders during an international security conference held Feb. 4-6 in Munich, Germany, raises more questions than answers.

The report, produced by a U.S.-Russian committee under the aegis of the New York City-based EastWest Institute, discusses the applicability of the Geneva and Hague conventions to cyberspace--but it doesn't make any recommendations, per se.  

Rather, it urges further study.

The institute presented the report during the annual Munich Security Conference. Attendees included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron.

The report has little problem acknowledging the complexity of networked environments, noting that entirely humanitarian infrastructure is intermingled in cyberspace with that of legitimate military targets, and that untangling the two would "likely be very costly and is contrary to current infrastructure architecture trends."

Nonetheless, it says that the United States and Russia should jointly "conduct an evaluation" on whether isolating humanitarian critical infrastructure is possible. Among the consequences for not mounting that study, the report says, is simply accepting the "loss of the humanitarian protections in times of conflict."

Whether that could be the outcome regardless of a funded study or not, due to how networks operate, the report doesn't say.

The report also says the two countries should "conduct a joint assessment" on whether a top level domain for humanitarian efforts would be feasible, again without discussing how such a domain would be supervised or protected.

Other recommendations include a study on whether cyber weapons should be outlawed (without touching on how such a ban would be verified), on how to best accommodate the rise of non-state cyber warriors, and on the value of recognizing a state of cyber conflict somewhere between war and peace.

For more:
- download the EastWest Institute report, "Working Towards Rules For Governing Cyber Conflict" (.pdf)

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