Legal Commentary

Deterring Cyberattacks

By Eugene Volokh

Herb Lin at the National Academies, with whom I had the pleasure of working on the NAS Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities report, passes along the following:

To stimulate work in this area, the NRC is offering one or more monetary prizes for excellent contributed papers that address one or more of the questions of interest found in its call for papers, which can be found at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CSTB_056215.

Abstracts of less than 500 words are due April 1, 2010. [?If you?re reading this notice after April 1, 2010 and still want to submit a paper, please take note of two things. First, there is an over-the-transom option that calls merely for final papers to be submitted by July 9, 2010 ? no abstracts or first drafts required under this option. Second, even abstracts submitted a couple of weeks after April 1 are likely to receive some feedback, although the committee won?t guarantee feedback after that date.?] First drafts are due May 21, 2010, final drafts July 9, 2010. For more information, see the call for papers.

The broad themes of interest include
A. Theoretical Models for Cyberdeterrence
B. Cyberdeterrence and Declaratory Policy
C. Operational Considerations in Cyberdeterrence
D. Regimes of Reciprocal/Consensual Limitations Regarding Cyberattack
E. Cyberdeterrence in a Larger Context
F. The Dynamics of Action/Reaction in Cyber Conflict
G. Escalation Dynamics of Cyber Conflict

In the call for papers, a number of more specific questions are contained within each theme. A variety of relevant collateral issues are addressed as well.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on March 28, 2010 (boomark / email).