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Microsoft has acknowledged that ‘the world needs new international rules to protect the public from nation state threats in cyberspace, and that ‘in short, the world needs a Digital Geneva Convention’.
Microsoft has acknowledged that ‘the world needs new international rules to protect the public from nation state threats in cyberspace, and that ‘in short, the world needs a Digital Geneva Convention’.
As fast as digital technologies have developed, means have been found to exploit their vulnerabilities. Accordingly, states have found a new ground for geopolitical meddling in cyberspace. Whereas legislative measures for addressing cyber-criminality were developed quickly, the willingness of states to engage in discussions on how to regulate their own behaviour in cyberspace has been less forceful.
As Internet governance (IG) grows increasingly important on international agendas, institutional coordination of the multistakeholder process is emerging as an important factor for successful IG outcomes.
We leave digital footprints everywhere. Modern society is marked by data which is continuously generated through various devices and in numerous ways – such as through social media, Internet browsing, and through satellite images, among others. This is why some call this the Big Data Era. While big data has become a topic for the private sector, promising greater efficiency and new business insights, it remains unclear what the potential of big data is for diplomacy.
Internet companies’ behaviour under scrutiny, governments exerting more pressure on companies to remove illegal content, and new legal measures planned to tackle fake news were among the main digital policy developments in January 2018.
Is diplomacy better off with the Internet? This question was on my mind as I was following the Twitter exchange between President Trump and the leaders of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. Each tweet escalated the rhetoric and moved us further from a peaceful solution – to conflict – and a resolution of differences, the main purpose of diplomacy.
In recent years the e-commerce agenda has become more complex and has revealed a growing convergence between the areas of trade and digital policy. Diplomats involved in e-commerce talks at the WTO, for example, have been required to discuss the trade implications of a broad range of issues, such as paperless trade, e-payments, data localisation, cybersecurity, encryption and network neutrality.
Two years ago, Diplo introduced a new capacity development programme, the Advanced Diploma in Internet Governance. The programme was built around a selection of online courses focussing on Internet governance (IG) issues: Introduction to Internet Governance, Internet Technology and Policy, Cybersecurity, and E-Diplomacy.
What is diplomacy? Who is a diplomat? And what is it that diplomats do? The answers to these questions will always be contingent. We can only ever give them from the vantage point of a particular place and time. We tend to forget this when we debate these questions. We also tend to forget that things could be otherwise and that by raising these questions we not only debate what is but also have a chance to rethink how things could or even should be.
I am a little late to this particular party; however, in the middle of last year, a very interesting debate broke out between the blogs of Shaun Riordan, Katharina Hone and others on the subject of ‘new’ diplomacies. Does the proliferation of new ‘kinds’ of (or prefixes for) diplomacy serve an intellectual, analytical purpose, or is it just another case of academics hankering after scholarly turf?
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