I am currently in the Romanian
Parliament in Bucharest participating in the NATO parliamentary
assembly. I am in the Civic Dimension of
Security Committee. A few months ago Lord JOPLING
presented a report on Cyber Security. His report dealt with a wide
range of topics: WikiLeaks and Anonymous were of great concern in his
report, where he wove together real and serious attacks on nations
such as Estonia with the threat of leaks: a very dangerous trend.
Leaking information to the public domain is not an act of war, I
would rather classify it a civic duty to expose war crimes.
I
have not been able to find a legal way to provide changes in this
biased report. I did criticize
it harshly
yesterday and basically said i could not support it with all its
factual
errors and biased perspective and attempts to make cyber attacks into
something that would justify the usage of article 5. Apparently
such criticism is not common
here at the assembly on reports. The Lord thus offered me to send in
info on factual errors. I did. I have with some great help from
activists from all over the world gone through this report step by
step and provided both amendments and deeper perspectives. You can
download it HERE as pdf.
In
the draft resolution on cyber security is no mention of the factual
errors in Lord Jopling report and no proper way for me to amend
those. Looking through the draft resolution on Cyber Security
the following struck me with discomfort:
“9. URGES
member governments and parliaments of the North Atlantic Alliance:
to ensure swift
implementation of the revised NATO Policy on Cyber Defence and the
related cyber defence Action Plan, adopted in June 2011, introducing
the cyber dimension in all three of NATO’s core tasks: collective
defence, crisis management and co operative security;
We
are URGED to ensure swift implementation of: revised NATO Policy on
Cyber Defence and the related cyber defence Action Plan, adopted in
June 2011
As
this is a secret document and we will not be given access to review
the policy. It is not wise for us the parliamentarians present here
to ensure swift implementation
of something we have not seen and will not be granted access to. It
makes a mockery of the Nato parliamentary assembly to request its
members to accept this process. If this is a common practice I urge
all parliamentarians to abstain from participating in such an act
because we cant possibly ask for legalizing something we have not been able to scrutinize
and this process of accepting policies blindly is not very democratic
and it does not provide the needed core information for us to have
debate and offer political guidance and authority.
Thus
I have requested that we will delete sub-paragraph 9.a in the draft
resolution on Cyber Security unless we be given prior access to NATO
Policy on Cyber Defence and the related cyber defence Action Plan,
adopted in June 2011.
No
one has chosen to do a report on the findings in the Afghan War logs.
I will ask if my committee would be willing to do that at this
assembly, there are not many like minded parliamentarians at the
assembly and thus harder to get a Rapporteur
status. I will keep on trying.
Here
is the entire draft resolution:
Civil dimension
of security
209 CDS 11 E
Original: English
NATO
Parliamentary Assembly
DRAFT RESOLUTION
on
CYBER
SECURITY
presented by
Lord
JOPLING (United Kingdom)
General
Rapporteur
The Assembly,
1. Recognizing
the benefits offered by the cyber domain to our societies as
well as to the defence and security sector, including opportunities
for greater situational awareness and co ordination among the
armed forces of the Allies as well as for the Alliance‘s public
diplomacy;
2. But also
concerned with the emergence of a new category of
threats that target national information infrastructures, and that
could seriously undermine the security interests of the Alliance and
its member states;
3. Anxious
that cyber defence capabilities and awareness of cyber threats vary
significantly across NATO member states thereby weakening the
Alliance’s overall cyber security;
4. Welcoming
the decisions made by the leaders of the Alliance at the NATO Lisbon
Summit and the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in June 2011,
identifying cyber security as one of the key priorities of the
Alliance;
5. Saluting
NATO’s approach aimed at expanding its cyber defence policy to
include centralized cyber protection of all NATO
bodies and the use of NATO’s defence planning processes in the
development of the Allies’ cyber defence capabilities. ;
6. Believing that,
in view of the growing scope and severity of cyber attacks, in
addition to exploiting fully the opportunities offered by Article 4,
the potential application of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty in
case of a serious cyber attack against the Alliance or its individual
members, should not be ruled out;
7. Noting
that legislative “black holes” still exist both at a national
level and in terms of international law when it comes to setting
security standards for the cyber domain;
8. Emphasizing
that stricter security regulations for the cyber domain should not
come at the cost of reduced civil liberties and rights, such as
freedom of speech and the right to communicate over the Internet, and
noting the key role of the Internet in mobilizing
democratic movements in authoritarian countries;
URGES member
governments and parliaments of the North Atlantic Alliance:
a. to ensure swift
implementation of the revised NATO Policy on Cyber Defence and the
related cyber defence Action Plan, adopted in June 2011, introducing
the cyber dimension in all three of NATO’s core tasks: collective
defence, crisis management and co operative security;
to promote domestic
awareness of cyber threats, taking into account lessons learned from
milestone events including the cyber attacks against Estonia in 2007
and against Georgia in 2008 as well as the emergence of Stuxnet
malicious software;
to scrutinize
domestic legal frameworks, ensuring that coherent and effective laws
are in place to address the evolving cyber threats;
to provide necessary
support for the efficient functioning of national Computer Incident
Response Teams, and to invest sufficiently in the training of
national cyber security experts;
to promote closer
partnerships between governments and the private sector in order to
ensure the security of government networks and improve the exchange
of expertise in case of a breach of security;
to ensure that the
introduction of additional security measures in the cyber domain are
accompanied by adequate mechanisms of parliamentary and public
oversight over their respective government institutions;
to support
international efforts to develop universal norms of acceptable
behaviour in the cyber domain that would ban the use of cyber
attacks against civilian targets, promote exchange of best practices
and establish mechanisms of international assistance to stricken
nations, while ensuring full universal access to the Internet as a
venue for the exchange of ideas and information;
to ensure that
adequate attention is paid to the physical protection of networks,
including undersea fiber-optic infrastructures;
URGES relevant
NATO bodies:
to ensure that
NATO Computer Incident Response Capability is fully operational
by the end of 2012, and that NATO’s cyber defence services are
centralized;
to facilitate, if
requested, national efforts of NATO member states to acquire
adequate cyber defence expertise and state-of-the-art
technologies;
to test the
efficacy of NATO and member states’ cyber defence efforts
through NATO’s periodic international exercises, and to ensure
that these exercises are fully funded, staffed and well-attended;
to use
capabilities such as NATO Cyber Defence Management Board and NATO
Co operative Cyber
Defence Centre of Excellence, to analyze rapid developments
further in the cyber domain and to develop strategies for
strengthening cyber defences across the Alliance, while
exploiting the advantages of the information age through
initiatives such as NATO Network Enabled Capability;
to develop
efficient co-operation mechanisms with the relevant EU
institutions, with the particular aim of supporting the EU’s
legislative efforts to establish robust cyber security standards
across the private sector;
to increase
assistance, if requested, to NATO partner countries in the field
of cyber security, particularly by sharing best practices and
raising awareness of cyber threats.
_______________
