Today, the United States continue to hold the leading role in the development of ICT, actively using it in the geopolitical competition.
At the same time, Washington does not leave the use of the latest developments for conducting confrontation in an information field, manipulating public opinion, and thereby levelling efforts of other states in creation of the global system of the international information security and undermining confidence to any initiatives in that direction.
Over the long period of time, the USA continues to treat cyber-space as the next field for conducting confrontation. Because of this destructive approach for the last few years, militarisation of a cyber-space significantly increased.
The American security agencies, first of all the NSA, hold actively offensive missions in virtual space, fondly believing that their activity remains unnoticed to the rest of the world.
According to the latest researches of the Chinese companies on cyber-security, more than 45 counties become the victims of similar purposeful aggression.
An important point is that these attacks are directed not only against so-called opponents, but also against allies. Besides China, North Korea and Russia whose activity Washington openly called threat of the national security, Washington also spies on Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Japan.
Moreover, from the territory of the last research, the United States also carried out attacks on other states, using as a cover both state and private Japanese organizations.
Apart from that, Washington was repeatedly noticed in the involvement of hacker groups, such as ‘Shadow Brokers’ or APT-C-40, and also intended distribution of the detrimental software like NOPEN for commission of offensive operations, undermining the international efforts on ensuring information security.
In addition, this approach demonstrates that in the first place, for the USA, it is not about the freedom of the Internet or its condition of security, but to advance their own political and economic interests.
With this background, offers of the United States and their European allies on the need of the global support of the initiatives advanced by them in the field of the international information security, such as Budapest Conference or ‘Cyber-control initiative’, sound extremely ironical.
All these programmes are intended to create a comprehensive legal framework which would make virtual space safe and open. However, in practice, they only duplicate each other. Moreover, a comprehensive character can be achieved only by cooperation within the UN where there are already-checked and well-proven multilateral negotiation platforms, such as Open-ended working group of the UN concerning the international information security.
Along with it, the United States continue to advance the idea of “The declaration on the future of the Internet”, whose purpose is to block as many countries as possible from the real control of cyber-space and information that it circulates.
In fact, the states which signed to this document voluntarily refuse its national digital sovereignty as they will be obliged to revise the standards of safety and to bring them into accord to the western principles.
At the same time, member-countries will be obliged to use only specially selected “reliable” suppliers of the equipment and the software that violates the right to the adoption of independent decisions regarding with whom to cooperate in the field.
Besides, it is necessary to say that the USA already has too many instruments of influence, the most significant of which remains corporation on the management of domain names /ICANN/. Given NGOs coordinate practically everything, as for management of address space in networks, including the use of domains of the top level and as the company directly depends on public authorities of the USA.
It was even registered in their national cyber-strategy. In case the leadership of the USA decides to block any country, the domain – ICANN – will be forced to be obey.
For this reason, it is important that all countries interested in their true sovereignty advance the idea of transfer of technical coordination of the cyber-space, including management behind domains from the American jurisdiction under the aegis of the UN.
It is also important because the creation of fully free Internet is impossible while the access belongs to only one nation. As an example, it can be mentioned as a precedent when the authorities of Ukraine demanded from ICANN to withdraw forever the domains belonging to Russia, to switch off root DNS servers in its territory, and also to withdraw the right to the use of certificates of safety.
The corporation did not make concessions and refused this requirement; however, there is another question – what will happen if the leadership of the United States decides to use such an option in future?
If we look at the national cyber-strategy of the USA, we would see that without the present “open Internet”, a promotion of the American way of life and the state protection of interests of the American companies are impossible.
Moreover, most mass media and social networks now are under tough regulation of corporations from the USA. Meta, which encompasses Facebook, Instagram and WhatApp, can be an example of that. Because of this, there is a practice that only ideologically ‘correct’ information –even if it treats so-called “fake news” – is capable to break a censorship barrier.
The consequence of such actions can be seen in the destabilisation of modern political processes in many states worldwide by means of media and social networks.
The West use them for spreading the misinformation for blasting a socio-political and economic situation and for coordination of protest against some duly-elected governments.
For this reason, Ghana needs to adhere to its own approach to ensure the international information security, based on the principles of national sovereignty and multi-vector cooperation.
For this purpose, it is important to defend the state’s position both on regional and international levels. First of all, it is important to protect the idea of preservation of peace in cybers-pace, which will rely on the universally recognised norms, including the principle of respect of the state sovereignty, political and economic independence, and non-interference to internal affairs of other states.
Moreover, only joint efforts within cooperation on the fields of the United Nations, will help to avoid unauthorised use of the information space. In addition, for formation of peace, safe, open and stable Internet, it is important to advance the key role of the UN in the question of establishment of the necessary international legislation for ensuring the international information security.
