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9 April 2015

Promoting Norms for Cyberspace

Henry Farrell, Associate Professor, George Washington University.
April 2015

The United States defined its preferred cyberspace norms—Internet openness, security, liberty, free speech, and with minimal government oversight and surveillance—in its 2011 International Strategy for Cyberspace. Although the United States has had little success so far in establishing norms against commercial espionage in cyberspace, it has had some early gains with the recognition that international law applies to state activity in cyberspace and that human rights protections that apply offline also apply online

These efforts to define shared norms have been accompanied by a process of norm promotion that suffered a significant setback in the summer of 2013 with the Snowden disclosures. The U.S. government should reinvigorate its efforts to spread and encourage the adoption of its preferred norms with the following steps: 

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