Cyberspace Cooperation

Promoting International Cyber Norms: A New Advocacy Forum is the product of EWI's Breakthrough Group on Promoting Measures of Restraint in Cyber Armaments. The report recommends the establishment of a forum to help deepen consensus around emerging cyber norms and bridging remaining substantial divides on normative issues. The proposed forum aligns with the recently announced intent of the governments of Estonia and the Netherlands to set up a "cyber norms platform." It also includes a comparative analysis of emerging norms of state behavior across five global organizations.

"Slowing the cyber arms race takes the global village," EWI's Global Vice President Bruce McConnell said. "Private organizations, led by NGOs, have a unique ability to promote government action to reduce the potential damage from of a real cyber war."

Written by EWI Professorial Fellow Greg Austin, EWI Global Vice President Bruce McConnell and Microsoft Director of Cybersecurity Policy (EMEA) Jan Neutze, this report supports the work of EWI’s Breakthrough Group on Promoting Measures of Restraint in Cyber Armaments. Other contributors include Shen Yi, Associate Professor and Executive Director, Workshop on the Studies of National Cyber Security Strategy and Technology, Fudan University and John Savage, EWI Distinguished Fellow and An Wang Professor of Computer Science at Brown University.

Read the full report here.  

On December 7, India’s Economic Times's reported on cooperation between India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the U.S. FBI. The article, "CBI & FBI join hands to reduce time required to fulfil requests on information and evidence," analyzes the sources of delay in the mutual legal assistance process that takes place when crime crosses borders.

As I told the Times, "On the Indian side, two issues sometimes cause delay. First, the request needs to come from the central authority in New Delhi - not from a state police official. Second, the details of the request are rather technical, and sometimes not all the information is provided in the correct manner. On the U.S. side, the process is also quite complicated."

To help address these sources of delay, the EWI breakthrough group on Modernizing International Procedures against Cyber-enabled Crimes is working with national and international law enforcement agencies and with private companies. The group’s most recent report, Convicting More Cyber Criminals, recommends key steps governments and companies can take to improve the rate of cyber crime convictions worldwide.

EWI supports the India-U.S. cooperation and looks forward to similar initiatives in many other countries.