In many ways, the benefits afforded by cyberspace are also its most potent fault lines. The ubiquity, anonymity and freedom available in cyberspace furthers many civil liberties. At the same time, the interconnectedness of cyberspace makes it very difficult to regulate, leaving significant portions of the global population, economy and infrastructure vulnerable to abuse.
The common strand within debates relating to the management of cyberspace concerns the difficulty of arriving at a global consensus on rules of the road for this medium. Many conversations on the best way to secure cyberspace are premised on the flawed conflation of the security of the network with the security of the content it hosts. Is it connectivity itself we are securing, or banking transactions, or freedom of expression, or all these elements? Ultimately nations will want both network and data security, but on the specific issue of how content is protected – and indeed, what content is protected – there is bound to be wide divergence among countries.
Source : The global policy journal