All this shows that borders shape our concept of international law and the regulatory framework that applies to international phenomena. According to Article 1 of the Convention, "The State as a person of international law must possess these qualifications: The previous discussion also reveals the constitutive and functional role of borders in international law.
They are also constitutive of international law because states are the genitor of international law.
INTERNATIONAL LAW, BORDERS, AND TERRITORY IN CYBERSPACE
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures put us in the same position as those earlier lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authority of distant and uninformed powers. The debate between Professors Johnston and Post on the one hand and Professor Goldsmith on the other about whether law and, more specifically, international law applies in cyberspace and how that law is created, applied and enforced is informed by different views of role and importance. of borders and territorially limited sovereignty in cyberspace. 34. Johnson and Post reject the possibility of applying existing notions of sovereignty and law to cyberspace due to its unique non-territorial and borderless character and, therefore, they propose the development of discrete laws for cyberspace.35 According to them, in the physical field. world, borders define the law that applies within a given space and there is an overlap between the physical space represented by states and the 'space of law'.
All of the above pose challenges to the law and although cyberspace needs to be regulated, existing territorially based laws are not suitable for cyberspace. Notwithstanding the strength of their argument, it should be noted that Johnston and Post's argument is not as radical as it seems because they do not reject the application of the law or of international law to cyberspace and, moreover, they still rely on borders for purposes of lawmaking, law enforcement and law enforcement in cyberspace, albeit a different kind of border. Second, although they reject the possibility of applying existing laws and legislative processes to cyberspace because they are territorially based and based on notions of physical borders, they do not reject the existence of borders in cyberspace.
The above represents views expressed in the early days of legal encounters with cyberspace and, as explained, explicitly or implicitly accepts the role of physical or normative boundaries in the application of law to cyberspace. For example, the 2013 report by the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Information and Telecommunications Developments in the Context of International Security [GGE]. States should cooperate in developing and implementing measures to enhance stability and security in the use of ICT and to prevent ICT practices recognized as harmful or potentially threatening international peace and security;
39 UN General Assembly, “Group of Governmental Experts on Information and Telecommunications Development in the Context of International Security”, 24 June 2013, UN Doc A/68/98, para. 41 UN General Assembly, “Group of Governmental Experts on Information and Telecommunications Development in the Context of International Security”, 22 July 2015, UN Doc A/70/174, para.
THE TERRITORIALISATION OF CYBERSPACE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
According to the report Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution, the intention of the leak was also to. 47 Director of National Intelligence, “Joint Statement from Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security” (October 7, 2016), available at: https://www.dhs.gov/ news joint-statement -department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national, accessed 24 August 2017. On the assumption that Russia was responsible for the hacking, the incident implicates two principles of international law that the GGE has identified as applying to cyberspace: one is the principle of sovereignty and the other is the principle of non-intervention.51 These two principles are central to and actually manifestations of the territorially bound approach to international law.
The principle of sovereignty refers to "a collection of rights that a state has".52 These rights cover both internal and external aspects of state sovereignty. 50 ICA, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intent in the Recent U.S. Elections” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Assessment of Russian Activities and Intent in the Recent U.S. Elections Background: Analytical Process and Attribution of Cyber Incidents” (January 6, 2017) . ) ICA 2017-01D, p. 8; UN General Assembly, “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Interference in the Internal Affairs of States and the Protection of Independence and Sovereignty”, 21 December 1965, UN Document A/RES/20/2131;.
According to former Department of State legal counsel Brian Egan, "a cyber operation by a state that interferes with another state's ability to hold an election, or that manipulates a state's election results, would be a clear violation of the rule of non- intervention".60 That whether or not this is the case depends on. 251: "The effects of the principle of respect for territorial sovereignty inevitably overlap with the effects of the principles of the prohibition of the use of force and of non-intervention." Coercion means that the will of the state is manipulated to do something that it would not otherwise do.
In the absence of coercion in US domestic affairs, will it amount to a violation of the principle of sovereignty? The view that it violated US sovereignty has been advanced by certain commentators.63 Whether this is so depends on the content of the principle of sovereignty and whether it is a legal norm, carrying legal consequences.
REALIGNING SOVEREIGNTY AND CYBERSPACE
China and Russia, along with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, submitted a proposal for an "International Code of Conduct on Information Security" to the United Nations General Assembly. Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Safeguarding Internet Security, Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China, Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services, Measures for the Administration of Security Protection of International Computer Information Networks , and other laws and regulations expressly prohibit the dissemination of information containing content that subverts state power, violates national unity, violates national honor and interests, incites hatred and ethnic secession, promotes heresy, pornography, violence, terror, and information of others that violate the rights and legitimate interests of others. Affairs and the Cyberspace Administration of China jointly published a White Paper, "International Cooperation Strategy in Cyberspace," which asserts that, as a basic norm in international relations, the principle of territorial sovereignty includes cyberspace.73 The protection of sovereignty in cyberspace is also one of the ways to guarantee national security under China's Cybersecurity Law.74.
75 Yi Shen “Cyber Sovereignty and the Governance of Global Cyberspace: Chin. Cyber sovereignty can be understood: the first key parts of cyber sovereignty refer to the sovereignty of the state to manage the flow of information within the territory; the second is that each state has the power to make cyber-related policies independently; the third is that every state should have approximately equal rights to participate in the decision-making process of the rules, norms or codes of conduct that govern global cyberspace; and respect for sovereignty should be one of the most important guiding principles for dealing with cyber-related issues internationally. A First Look” Proceedings of the 3rd USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Internet Communications, August 2013; Warf, B. 2015); It is interesting in this regard to recall how Major General Hao Yeli of the Chinese People's Liberation Army divides cyber sovereignty into three levels.
In his view, states at the lowest level, that of cyber infrastructure, should be willing to hand over collective authority in the interests of standardization and interconnectivity; at the middle level of application “the degree of cyber sovereignty should be adapted to local conditions”, while at the top level of “regime, law, political security and ideology, which is indisputable and encompasses the governing foundations and embodies the core interests of the society.” the country', the leading role of the government remains. 84 For cyberspace as global commons, see Dan Hunter, “Cyberspace as place and the tragedy of the digital anticommons” California Law Review, vol. Moreover, while in the physical world people or powerful authorities can claim part of the territory, as in the exercise of the right of self-determination, and if successful, create their own state with clear boundaries separating themselves from people and objects that residing in other realms, neither objects nor persons can move into cyberspace and break their ties with their own states.
CONCLUSION
Unilateral or collective abandonment of the exercise of sovereign rights and voluntary limitations of sovereign rights are indeed expressions of state sovereignty. 85. If sovereignty represents a claim over a piece of territory or otherwise over a space, cyberspace is such a space that, as said, has a physical, logical and social component. The problem with the idea of sovereign cyberspace, however, is that its physical and social components can never be separated from existing states.
People can move certain activities and actions into cyberspace, they can experience cyberspace, or ultimately inhabit cyberspace, but they can never remove themselves from the real world. This means that cyberspace and its organization cannot be independent of states and therefore cyberspace cannot be sovereign because power in cyberspace is mediated by states. The purely virtual part of cyberspace, however, cannot be sovereign, because inanimate, ethereal space cannot be sovereign.
