Prof. Schmitt Discusses Tallinn Manual

On Tuesday November, 15, 2016, Professor Michael Schmitt visited Yale Law School, and gave a lunchtime talk to law students. Schmitt, one of the leading experts on cyber warfare and international law, talked about the upcoming Tallinn Manual (“Tallinn 2.0”), which is an effort to apply existing customary international law to cyber warfare. The Tallinn Manual is sponsored by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, located in Estonia, and will replace the previous Tallinn Manual, by providing a more comprehensive and broader framework.

The new Tallinn Manual, Schmitt explained, will deal with issues of sovereignty, non-intervention, law of the sea, diplomacy, espionage, and countermeasures, and their connection to cyberspace activities. Unlike the previous Manual, the new one will include experts from a broader set of countries, both members and  non-members of NATO. Part of Schmitt’s talk was dedicated to the question of whether data can qualify as a protected civilian object. According to Schmitt, this issue is among the most pressing ones in relation with cyber conflict, and the academic and military communities are deeply divided as to the characterization of civilian data in an armed conflict context, as leaving it unprotected may cause significant harms to individuals and organizations who rely on the availability and integrity of their data. Tallinn 2.0 is expected to be released in February 2017.

Prof. Schmitt’s talk was co-sponsored by the Center for Global Legal Challenges, Information Society Project, and TechSoc.