Cybersecurity and States: Same Bed, Different Nightmares

Abstract

Cybersecurity refers to the security of users, network systems, and states. The Internet provides the base for many critical infrastructures in the information society. Data transmission, transport systems, and finance, as well as banking at both national and global levels, rely greatly on the World Wide Web and the Internet. The emerging mode of business termed e-commerce, as its name suggests, is based on the Internet. For all these purposes, a secured Internet is required. Providing security to its citizens and their property, and protecting territorial integrity, is a principal job of the state. However, different states have different understandings of threats and security. Despite their different sources of security threats, the state actors agree that cybercrime is a common security threat, but they differ on ways of ensuring cybersecurity. The global south wants to create a new international body to look after transborder Internet security issues, but the US wants the existing arrangements of Internet security to prevail. The apparent agreement between the state actors on Internet security masks the tension arising from the states’ individual notions of security. For example, the security of China, Iran, and Cuba is at least partly security from the US and broadly from Western penetration through the Internet, while the US is afraid of terrorism from the “terrorist” groups based in the global south. But all these different states have agreed to create a global culture of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity issues give them a cover for maintaining state control of the Internet and suppressing freedom of expression.KeywordsTerrorist GroupSecurity ThreatGlobal CultureInternet SecurityNational Security AgencyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.