Editing Information warfare (section)

==Legal and ethical concerns==

While information warfare has yielded many advances in the types of attack that a government can make, it has also raised concerns about the moral and legal ambiguities surrounding this particularly new form of war.  Traditionally, wars have been analyzed by moral scholars according to [[just war theory]].  However, with Information Warfare, Just War Theory fails because the theory is based on the traditional conception of war.  Information Warfare has three main issues surrounding it compared to traditional warfare:

#The risk for the party or nation initiating the cyberattack is substantially lower than the risk for a party or nation initiating a traditional attack.  This makes it easier for governments, as well as potential terrorist or [[criminal organization]]s, to make these attacks more frequently than they could with traditional war.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Ajir|first1=Media|last2=Vailliant|first2=Bethany|date=2018|title=Russian Information Warfare: Implications for Deterrence Theory|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26481910|journal=Strategic Studies Quarterly|volume=12|issue=3|pages=70–89|jstor=26481910|issn=1936-1815|access-date=2020-10-31|archive-date=2021-02-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210209193856/https://www.jstor.org/stable/26481910|url-status=live}} {{open access}}</ref>
#Information communication technologies (ICT) are so immersed in the modern world that a very wide range of technologies are at risk of a cyberattack.  Specifically, civilian technologies can be targeted for cyberattacks and attacks can even potentially be launched through civilian computers or websites.  As such, it is harder to enforce control of civilian infrastructures than a physical space. Attempting to do so would also raise many ethical concerns about the right to privacy, making defending against such attacks even tougher.
#The mass-integration of ICT into our system of war makes it much harder to assess accountability for situations that may arise when using robotic and/or cyber attacks.  For robotic weapons and automated systems, it's becoming increasingly hard to determine who is responsible for any particular event that happens.  This issue is exacerbated in the case of cyberattacks, as sometimes it is virtually impossible to trace who initiated the attack in the first place.<ref name="mariarosariataddeo"/>

Recently, legal concerns have arisen centered on these issues, specifically the issue of the [[right to privacy]] in the United States of America.  Lt. General [[Keith B. Alexander]], who served as the head of Cyber Command under President [[Barack Obama]], noted that there was a "mismatch between our technical capabilities to conduct operations and the governing laws and policies" when writing to the [[Senate Armed Services Committee]].  A key point of concern was the targeting of civilian institutions for cyberattacks, to which the general promised to try to maintain a mindset similar to that of traditional war, in which they will seek to limit the impact on civilians.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/world/15military.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100419041052/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/world/15military.html |archive-date=19 April 2010 |url-status=live |title=Cyberwar Nominee Sees Gaps in Law|date=15 April 2010|work=The New York Times}}</ref>