DSI Publications

The book chapter analyzes the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement's (TCA) Chapter on future thematic cooperation on cybersecurity. It explains the broader political, technological and regulatory context of cybersecurity cooperation at the international and the EU levels. It then analyzes the TCA's passages individually and within this broader context. Finally, it provides an evaluation and outlook on future EU-UK cooperation on cybersecurity.

The book chapter "Digital Identity" in the Handbook "Digitization of the State and Public Administration" analyzes digital identification and authentification technologies and their impact in public administration and society. First, it introduces and defines the concept of digital identity. Second, it gives an overview of the technologies' applications in public administration and beyond. Third, it analyzes their governance and implementation in Europe and Germany. Fourth, it presents perspectives for the future development of digital identity in increasingly networked societies.

Critical infrastructure protection is a joint task of the state and the economy. Nevertheless, there does not yet exist any standardized approach for a common risk management approach. This article proposes such a methodology, leaning on ISO 27000-series and implying three perspectives: the technical, micro perspective, the organizational macro perspective besides the country-wide meta perspective.

The article critically examines the current discourse on the legal status and substance of “sovereignty” in the context of the application of international law to cyberspace against the backdrop of conflicting political-ideological attitudes. After tracing the origins of the interpretation of “respect for sovereignty” as a primary rule of international law, two approaches to cyberspace are surveyed that challenge the emerging consensus: “cyber imperialism,” embodied by the US and the other Five Eyes members on the one hand, and “cyber Westphalia,” represented by China, Russia, and Iran on the other. Both conceive cyberspace in ways fundamentally irreconcilable with prevailing legal views. A third group of states endorses the “sovereignty-as-rule” understanding but leaves this legal position vulnerable to both authoritarian co-optation and imperialist dismissal. In light of this, the paper offers an alternative interpretation of state practice and international jurisprudence that constructs sovereignty as a principle with derivative primary rules. It is shown that despite not by itself having the status of a rule, the principle of sovereignty allows for the identification of rules that protect the territorial integrity and political independence of states beyond the traditional notions of the prohibition of intervention and the use of force. Following a careful analysis of evidence in existing practice in support of this novel, doctrinally more precise understanding of sovereignty, the policies of “persistent engagement” and “cyber sovereignty” are assessed in light of the argument’s legal implications.