Harriet Moynihan and Philippa Webb have recently contributed to Oxford Law Pro with a Thought Leadership article on Accountability for Harmful Cyber Activities.
Cyber operations increasingly threaten international peace and security. To date, States that have been the victims of malicious cyber operations have mainly chosen to respond through diplomatic, political, or operational means, such as multilateral and bilateral dialogue, naming and shaming, sanctions and countermeasures. These responses, while important, come with limitations, including accountability gaps. Applying the law on the peaceful settlement of inter-State disputes to the cyber context, this article examines how various means of peaceful settlement—including negotiation, fact-finding, arbitration, litigation before the International Court of Justice and cases before human rights mechanisms—may offer States ways both to de-escalate cyber disputes and to settle them peacefully. This article also analyses the trend for greater use of domestic and international criminal law as a means of holding individual perpetrators to account for harmful cyber operations. The article concludes by observing that, as normative debates mature and institutional capacities improve, we can expect to see greater use of the courts by both States and non-State actors as a pathway towards strengthening accountability for malicious cyber operations.
Read the full article here: https://academic.oup.com/info-oxford-law-pro/pages/accountability-harmful-cyber-activities