| Cyberspace has created a new frontier of human interaction and political relations. Unlike the discovery of new territory or the claims over seawaters, the reaches of cyberspace are limitless. However, a myriad of issues surface as states and their citizens begin exploring these new frontiers. National boundaries blur in cyberspace and have become meaningless in many planes of the Internet. The biggest questions seem to arise through attempts to determine jurisdiction in cyberspace and in determining how far that jurisdiction should reach. This has been the quandary since the conception of the Internet and remains a pertinent issue today as crime has found its way to the cyber world. Many states have enacted their own domestic cyber laws, and there exist several international treaties concerning cyberspace. However these treaties have proven ineffectual as cyber crimes have now pervaded into interstate conflict. The following thesis should reveal the troublesome and treacherous state of international cyber law and how this has affected recent conflicts in Estonia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan; each of these cases shows different aspects of interstate cyber crime and how more stringent laws governing the Internet could have alleviated the effects of these attacks. The ultimate goal is to prove the necessity for cyber law reform and the dangers to come if this is not accomplished. |
