President Macron launched the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace during the Internet Governance Forum 2018 that ended in Paris last week. He advocated more active internet governance and more effective cooperation on cybersecurity and cyber-trust between states. The concerned parties should aspire to an open, safe, stable, accessible and peaceful cyberspace that would become an inalienable part of life in all its aspects, including the social, economic, cultural and political. On the whole, the document is an attempt to establish clear rules for the use of cyber-weapons.
According to The Telegraph, representatives of 51 countries who attended the forum, as well as global IT giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, HP, Oracle and several Russian companies, approved the initiative that was signed by over 370 delegates. The United States, China, Russia, Turkey and some other countries refused to support the initiative at state level, dealing a serious blow to the French proposal.
“The internet is a space currently managed by a technical community of private players. But it’s not governed. So now that half of humanity is online, we need to find new ways to organize the internet. Otherwise, the internet as we know it today — free, open and secure — will be damaged by the new threats,” President Macron said.
The initiative was conceived after the failure of talks on cyberspace regulation at the UN in 2017, due to resistance from a number of countries to setting rules for advanced cyber-weapon systems. At that time, 51 countries and 218 companies signed a joint pledge to abide by these rules. The document stipulated that IT companies must assume responsibility for increasing trust, security and stability in cyberspace.
Discussion of the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace will continue next year, during the Paris Peace Forum and later at the Internet Governance Forum 2019 in Berlin.
