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Global leaders have pushed for greater international cooperation on tackling cyber attacks at a two-day conference in London this week.
Politicians and business leaders from 60 countries from India to the US to China gathered at the conference on issues ranging from cyber security and the “malicious use of digital networks” to the role of the Internet in development.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr William Hague, called for the acceptance of seven principles for more effective cyber cooperation, warning that nations that had weak cyber defence would be at a ‘serious' strategic disadvantage.
Principles
While he made no specific mention of specific countries that restricted freedom of expression, the principles included the need for cyberspace to remain open to innovation, and the free flow of ideas, information and expression, and the need for collective action from online criminal attacks, he said.
“We need rules of the road,” he told delegates. “It will become harder to protect our users or to prevent our defence from being swamped.”
There was no explicit mention of specific nations that violated such norms, though Mr Hague said he hoped to widen the pool of those nations and users who agreed with them.
The message was reiterated by Mr Carl Bildt, Sweden's Foreign Affairs Minister, who said that while cyberspace had to continue to be free of state regulations, international standards and safeguards were needed.
“We need robust and secure access to the web without which society and people will be left behind.”
Role of internet
“Global coordination can ensure the Internet can thrive without continued attacks,” said Mr Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology who represented India, who focused on the role of the Internet on economic development, pointing to the fact that of the 110 million people online in India, many didn't have bank accounts.
Countries couldn't simply rely on market forces, but states had a responsibility to increase the reach of the Internet within their populations, he said.
While political leaders focused on the importance of global cooperation, business leaders warned of the dangerous of increased government involvement in regulation. Mr Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, warned of the dangers of fear mongering generating ‘misguided and overreaching government policy'.
 follow-up conferences will be held, in Hungary in 2011 and South Korea in 2012.
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