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Cyber Warfare Still Poses Legal Questions
A body of accepted international law on cyber warfare slowly is emerging, but more needs to be done to address new world of aggression, civilian and military officials said Tuesday
Legal norms are emerging in cybersecurity, but many questions about what is legal and what is not in cyber warfare remain unanswered, both in the U.S. and on the international stage, diplomatic and national security officials said Tuesday at an event hosted by U.S. Cyber Command at Fort Meade, Md.
"Attorneys and scholars face a variety of complex legal issues arising around the use of this new technology," Cyber Command chief of staff Rear Adm. Margaret Klein said at the conference. However, she was quick to add, as other speakers also added, that basic agreed-upon legal principles exist. For example: the United States government believes that operations in cyberspace should follow parallel rules for military operations in the real or "kinetic" world.
Klein said that although the leap to cyber warfare represents a shift in the way that the military carries out its operations, it is not dissimilar to other technological leaps that were also accompanied by a lag in the development of related legal norms. Unfortunately, the world is now moving at a much faster pace, and glacial development of the laws of cyber war is not something Klein wants to see. "We don't have that much time," she said.
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