Malcolm Hutty wrote: > I'm not going to judge the specific work Bill's Working Group is doing, > as I'm not sufficiently sighted. But on the broader issue of whether > this /type/ of engagement is advisable, and Nick's challenge to it, I > would give a qualified "Yes": of course I recognise the risks, but > nonetheless it is in our community's long term interests to engage.
Agreed that it is important to engage with legal and regulatory bodies. The issue is that legislation tends to be a rather blunt instrument and as you and Kurtis point out, it is very important to be careful about language, not least because once something is enshrined in laws or international treaties, the language becomes embedded and very difficult to change afterwards. Regarding Bill's suggestion about excluding civilian infrastructure from "cyber-warfare", it would be useful and probably productive to see this discussed at the UN, but am not sure that an online poll is going to do justice to the sort of nuance necessary to provide informed support for what he's proposing. Nick
