Editorial
Welcome to the fourth newsletter of the HUJI CyberLaw Program.
The last two months have been particularly hectic for our Program. During this short period we organized or co-organized no fewer than five conferences and workshops, while at the same time hosting 10 other public lectures and seminars. These events serve a dual purpose from our perspective: they nurture and facilitate public discussion in Israeli academia and beyond on the role of law and law enforcement in cyber security, and on protection of basic rights and public interests in cyberspace; and they allow us to present our research work to broad professional circles, obtain feedback from local and international experts, and develop professional ties with other researchers working on similar projects.
I believe that each of the five conferences/workshops was highly successful in advancing both the goals mentioned above:
- Our Tallinn Manual 2.0 workshop brought together some of the world’s leading experts on the rules governing cyber operations, including Prof. Michael Schmitt, the general editor of the Tallinn Manuals (and an associate researcher in the Program), to discuss the influence of the Manuals on state practice. The discussion was very stimulating (see below the blog post by Waxman & Shany), and the workshop also proved an excellent opportunity for our researchers to present advance versions of their research papers on the Tallinn Manuals and Tallinn process and to benefit from supportive and critical reactions.
- The First Annual Cyber Law conference, held by the CyberLaw Program at HUJI in cooperation with the Cyber Law and Policy Center at Haifa University, offered a tour d’horizon of more than 20 local and international research projects on cyber challenges to human rights. I was particularly pleased to see six Program researchers present their work in this context, and hope to see most of them move on now to publish their research at a conference symposium scheduled for publication in the Israel Law Review.
- The workshop on Cyber Breaches and Private Law, co-organized by our Program with Geneva University as part of an ongoing collaboration between the two institutions, brought together academics and practitioners to discuss questions of regulation, liability and enforcement, through utilization of private law. Here too, Program researchers were able to test their ideas, including about indirect regulation through tort litigation, contractual devices and insurance policies, and obtain valuable insights from legal professionals, government regulators, and other academics.
- The Program also cooperated with HUJI’s Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace in organizing a conference on Cyber Security and Regional Security. The event, in which our post-doctoral fellow Amit Sheniak (who studies policy questions relevant to cyber security) played a key role, focused on cyber security policies in East-Asia. The conference opened up new directions of research for us and sparked new contacts in East Asia, with which we plan to cooperate further in the future.
- Lastly, the first CyberLaw/Shiboleth symposium on the Implications for Israeli Business of the entry into force of the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was held toward the end of January. This event also brought together academic, practitioners, lawyers, technological experts, and students to discuss a landmark legal development that has significant implications, not least for the topic of digital rights that is being studied by Program researchers (including myself).
We are already in the process of planning other conference, workshops and seminars for the remainder of 2018, as we regard this arm of our activities as a central part of our mission: to generate knowledge about law in cyberspace; to embed our research in the broader academic and professional environment; and to engage decision makers with a view to utilizing research to advance online rights and public interests.
I thank you for your interest and support. As always, we look forward to receiving your thoughts and comments about this newsletter and our activities.
Sincerely
Yuval Shany
Program Director
